Enter the Doctor
by TheNewJeniferChurch
Summary: YAHF: Xander picks up something that isn't a gun in Ethan's shop. Repost from a profile I lost the password to. (Yes, another one.)
1. What?

_I LOST ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT AS MEPOND, SO I OPENED THIS ONE. SORRY I JUST GOT AROUND TO REPOSTING MY WORK, BUT I WANTED THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS ONE READY TO GO FIRST. IT'S THE ONE YOU'VE ALL BEEN WAITING ON THE LONGEST. I'M ALSO MAKING SURE THERE ARE NO GLARING ERRORS BEFORE POSTING ANY OF IT. IF ANYONE SPOTS SOMETHING, PLEASE LET ME KNOW IN A CONSTRUCTIVE WAY._

 **Enter, The Doctor**

 **Chapter 1: What?!**

 _Summary: YAHF: Xander picks up something that isn't a gun in Ethan's shop._

 _Note: This is a little off from real life, because I don't know enough about the earlier Doctors, and I wanted this to be David Tennant's incarnation. So, even though the reboot started in 2005, I'm pretending that Xander could be watching it anyway. That said, I'm not changing the timelines from inside the shows, only the outside. "Rose" still happens in 2005, and "Halloween" still happens in 1997. It's time travel!_

Xander wandered around the shop looking through what he thought he could afford in the toys and guns section while Buffy tried to convince Willow to go all out for Halloween. Good luck with that. He knew she wasn't really ready to be all out there. She'd be stunning when she was, though, no doubt. He had all kinds of respect for his oldest friend, and he knew that once she got over her shy, she was going to be magnificent.

He had a set of fatigues from the army surplus store and he was really just looking for a gun to go with them, figuring he could afford something that simple. Not that he didn't wish he could afford something better, but that was the way it went. Money wasn't about to start growing on trees, even in Sunnydale.

He had just found the toy M-16, when he spotted it. _No way!_ But it was. He grabbed the little toy with the blue light on the end of it. Sure, it was just a flashlight. But it was made to look like a sonic screwdriver, one from the most recent season of Doctor Who! Ever since they had rebooted the British scifi series, Xander had watched it avidly, surprised at first that a British TV show could be so good, then just glad that Giles had BBC America. It was the one thing British that Giles and Xander could both agree on.

He thought hard. His Dad had one decent suit, chocolate brown, and he could come up with a collared shirt and tie. It wasn't pinstriped, and he couldn't afford Converse sneakers, but he could buy the screwdriver and a pair of fake square-framed glasses here. Then he'd just need to figure out his hair. Perfect!

So Buffy went home with an eighteenth-century dress, Willow went home with a ghost costume just like Xander had known she would, and he went home with a screwdriver and a pair of brainy specs. At least two of them would look good tomorrow night.

 _Early the next night. . ._

The Doctor blinked and looked around. _What?!_ How had he gotten here? Where _was_ here, anyway? And what were those things?!

All over what appeared to be a typical late 20th-early 21st century American street in late October, small monsters of many different species were running abound and attacking costumed human children and adults. He took out his sonic and ran a quick scan over one little monster as it ran past him. Oh, that was interesting! They were actually all human, but something else had been laid over the top. The child was still there, but the monster was on the outside of them. Almost as if-his eyes widened as a horrible thought occurred to him. He scanned himself, and sure enough, the Time Lord was only a facade over a young human, about sixteen or seventeen years old.

He must have stopped breathing because he felt his respiratory bypass kick in. He felt normal, but—yes, he could sense that human mind, just under the surface. Quickly he skimmed the boy's thoughts. He was understandably stressed, but seemed all right. This wasn't like the situation with Cassandra, so he wouldn't be squishing the boy out of existence in his own head. He also sensed the contact, and more, he understood what it meant. _Doctor? I'm sorry! I had no idea this was going to happen when I dressed up as you for Halloween!_

Quickly the Doctor calmed the boy down. _That's all right, really. I'm flattered. Can you tell me your name?_

The boy pulled himself together. _Right. Sorry. Name's Xander. Hey, is that Willow?_

He paid more attention to his surroundings, and spotted a provocatively dressed girl headed in their general direction. She spotted him and yelled, "Xander!"

The Doctor shook his head. This was going to get complicated quickly. "Hello, Willow, was it?"

"Xander?"

"Well, sort of. He's here, but I kind of got wrapped around him somehow." He held his hand out to her. "I'm the Doctor."

She moved to shake his hand automatically, but her hand passed right through it. "Oh!"

From inside him, Xander cursed, fluently. _She dressed as a ghost! Does that mean she's dead?_

"Xander, calm down. Willow, Xander tells me you dressed as a ghost. I think you'd better show me where you left the rest of yourself."

"Right, and Xander dressed as the Doctor. So I guess you're really the Doctor? The Time Lord? Oh, this is bad. We need-" Then she spotted someone. "Buffy!" She ran toward a raven-haired girl in 18th century dress. Seriously, she could have walked out of a ball or the court of George III. And she looked utterly bewildered. The Doctor scanned her, and sure enough, she was simply laid over the top of a different person, one identical in face and form, but different in mind and hair color. "Buffy, are you okay?"

A roar behind them made the Doctor whip around. Two large monsters were right there, and he quickly changed the setting on the sonic to emit a high pitched screech at volume. The sound was excruciating, and the monsters left. He turned back around and found that the young noblewoman had collapsed in a faint. He shook his head. There was a reason he didn't take his traveling companions from that era. "All right, let's get her out of the street. Willow, where did you leave yourself? I need to check on you, as well."

With that he knelt down and picked the girl up. She was quite small, and no trouble to carry, but he carried her over his shoulder to keep one hand free to use the sonic if need be.

As they ran, Willow said, "Is Buffy okay?"

"She's fine, she just fainted. You, I'm not sure of. Now leg it!"

Finally realizing that he was worried about her, Willow ran back to the old woman's porch. Her body lay there, still covered by the sheet he hoped wouldn't become her shroud. He sat Buffy down, where she groaned a little. Good that she was all right, but right now he was much more worried about Willow. He took up the sheet and got it to where she could use it for a pillow. It was very disconcerting, having the spirit behind him and the body in front. He checked her pulse while he ran a quick scan. "No pulse, but-" He read his scan. "Yes! Your body is in some kind of suspended animation. It's being generated by the same energy that's holding me over your friend here and holding that noblewoman over your friend Buffy. In fact, all of these monsters seem to have been created by it."

Xander said, _That's freaky! But Willow's gonna be okay?_

"Yes, Xander, she'll be fine. But it really is dangerous out here. We need to get both your body and the young lady indoors."

Willow shook her head. "I don't understand. Buffy is the strongest person I know."

"Buffy's not the one in front, though. Right now, you're not talking to your friend Xander. You're talking to me. It'll be the same with her when she wakes up. Which she seems to be doing now." He turned to the other girl, who was beginning to regain consciousness. "Hello, there. I'm the Doctor. How's your head?"

The girl was still a little out of it, but she said, "It doesn't hurt, but it spins, a bit. Where am I? Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor, as I said. And your name?"

"Elizabeth MacSumrhadh. Doctor who? And who is she?"

"We're friends, and right now we're all in very real danger. We're going to a safe place, but you're going to have to keep up. Do you think you can do that?"

"But your dress, and hers! Why is she naked?" Xander laughed, having heard that line before.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're not related to the English royal family are you?"

Confused, she said, "No, why?"

Infected by Xander's laughter, he chuckled and shook his head. "No reason. Come on, up you get." He helped the girl to stand up, then turned to Willow. "We need a safe place, and we need information."

In unison, Xander and Willow said, " _Giles_." Willow continued. "He's got the best information on spells and demons. And I'm betting this is a spell, not a demon."

Now the Doctor was confused. "What? Why?"

Oblivious to his confusion, Willow said, "Because the effect is very widespread, but still doesn't affect everyone. See, there's still real people out here. Of course, it could be a demon casting a spell. You never know around here."

Xander agreed. _Yeah, Doc. I know you're used to looking for aliens, but that's not the way it works here._

"Magic and demons?" He could tell the boy was telling the truth, close as their psyches were, but magic was just not a force he was used to reckoning with.

 _Here, they're real. In that parallel universe, the_ Hindenburg _never crashed, so there were zeppelins everywhere._

"Right, but that's just a minor difference. What would cause-oh! Carrionites! In this universe the Carrionites must never have been defeated, or at least not before they started exploring the universe. They must have reached Earth at some point and got the early humans to follow them, or at least some of them. Well, that does change things. I wonder what else is different."

Willow had been watching him, and said, "You know that's creepy, right? Talking to yourself and answering?"

Xander and the Doctor both said, " _You're a ghost!_ "

She looked sheepish at that. "Oh, yeah."

Suddenly Elizabeth started screaming about a demon. They all turned to look. An SUV drove hurriedly down the road, trying to avoid the mini monsters. "That's not a demon," said Willow. "That's a car."

Elizabeth was hiding behind the Doctor. "What does it want?"

He shook his head. Xander said, _And we thought Buffy was blonde._

Silently the Doctor agreed, but that wouldn't help matters. Besides, Rose was blonde, and she was quite capable and sensible. "It's a machine, child. You've been brought to the future by accident. Now we're going to go to someone named Giles, presumably a person with more knowledge about this particular threat than I have. We're going to have to run, all right?"

Elizabeth frowned. "Can't you carry me? Or—or find a steed?"

He shook his head. _Priorities_. "No time for the steed, and I've got to carry the body of this girl. See, the magic of the night, the same that brought me from the future and you from the past forced her out of her body. We can't allow the body to become damaged if she is to return to it when this has all been reversed. Now, I don't want to leave you here, but-"

"No!" she said quickly. Visibly rallying, she said, "I-I can run."

He gave her a brilliant smile, knowing that it was taking a great deal of courage not to utterly depend on the man of the group. "Brilliant!" He picked up Willow's body, and settled it over his shoulder, just as he had carried Elizabeth before. "Willow? Lead the way."

She squared her shoulders, and said, "Right. This way." The Doctor and Elizabeth followed her toward the high school.

Not too much distance or time had passed before a woman's screaming attracted their eyes. Willow shouted, "Cordelia!"

Sure enough, there was a woman in a very tight cat costume being chased by a not-so-costumed Yeti. Briefly, the memory of fighting robot versions of the creatures in his second body skittered across his consciousness, but he quickly thrust all thoughts of Jamie, Victoria and Tibet away from his mind. This was a much more organic creature, anyway.

She spotted their group, as well. "Xander! Help me!"

Telepathically, so as not to embarrass the boy, the Doctor said, _Why are all your friends girls?_ Then he shouted at Cordelia. "Come on!" She ran toward them, and the Doctor got his sonic ready. "Cover your ears!" The sound coming from the screwdriver was more than enough to get the blasted thing to back off. Then he shouted to it in perfect Tibetan to leave them the bloody hell alone.

Surprised and hurting from the sonic attack, the Yeti went in the opposite direction.

Out of breath, the costumed woman said, "What's going on?"

Willow said, "Okay, your name is Cordelia, you're not a cat, you're in high school, and we're your friends. Well, sort of." But the Doctor knew. This woman had not been affected by the magic. Finding out why not would be the key to unraveling this mystery.

Rolling her eyes, Cordelia said, "That's nice, Willow. And you went mental when?"

Surprised and excited, Willow said, "You know us?"

Cordelia huffed, "Yeah. Lucky me." Looking between Willow and the Doctor, she said, "What's with the name game?"

"A lot's going on."

"No kidding. I was just attacked by Jo-Jo, the Dog-Faced Boy. Look at my costume!" She showed them that the Yeti had torn her sleeve. "Do you really think that Partytown's gonna give me my deposit back? Not on the likely."

The Doctor interrupted her before her tirade could continue. "Wouldn't it be more sensible to have this conversation somewhere not crawling with magically animated costume creatures?"

Willow nodded. "Yeah, come with us. We're headed to the library. Giles should be able to figure this out."

"Who died and made you boss?"

Willow gave her a look, but just kept walking.

"Cordelia," said the Doctor. "Don't make jokes about dying tonight. I'm carrying her body, and if this doesn't get fixed, she might not be able to get back into it."

"Xander, what's with the British? You really have been hanging around Giles too long."

Xander bristled at her disregard of Willow's condition. _Oh, Will might die, but I don't care 'cause I'm too 'Queen of the Populars'!_

"Talk and run, Cordelia. We'll explain on the way, now shift!"

It wasn't long before they were joined by a person who instantly raised the Doctor's hackles. Xander didn't like Angel very much, but he acknowledged that the vampire was an ally, and completely in love with Buffy Summers.

The Doctor was never one to follow Time Lord law, but in the case of vampires, he could see the point of their kill-on-sight order. In his own universe, the Time Lords had wiped out the Great Vampires in a massive war after accidentally releasing them from their home universe. It hadn't stopped the creation of the Lesser Vampire races, including the vampires of Earth, the Saturnyne and the Plasmavore.

Angel had a soul, and he was on a mission of penance for all he had committed while that soul was absent, so the Doctor tamped down on his gut reaction based on Xander's honest assessment of the creature. It was a concept he understood well, that guilt toward one's crimes against the universe, and Angel seemed to be honest.

Soon, they arrived at the local high school, and he wondered how it could be that one of the best occult collections in North America was in a high school library. That was also where their luck with the monsters ran out. The monster was large, with huge bovine horns on either side of its head, and Elizabeth was understandably frightened. Angel moved to protect her, but in the process he revealed his demonic nature, and she absolutely freaked out, running off alone into the night.

Angel dealt with the beast by knocking it unconscious, not knowing if it was an affected human or a real demon and not wanting to take the chance, but the look on his face at Elizabeth's terror of him was enough to cement the Doctor's growing good will. He realized that Buffy was this man's Rose, the one who made him better, his love, and his redemption, but also facing the prospect of a dark future without her when eventually she died. The thought of seeing that look on Rose's face if she ever learned of his actions during the Time War-well, that was his greatest fear.

Angel desperately wanted to run off after Elizabeth, but the Doctor said, "Help me get Willow and Cordelia safe, and I'll help you look for her."

"You're not really Xander, though. You don't know the town like he does, so how are you going to help me?" Frustration and indecision played across the vampire's face.

"I'm not, but he's still in here, and I'm a telepath. We're able to talk to each other, so he can help as well."

Angel nodded. "All right. Let's go."

Giles had been looking forward to this quiet time. Halloween was traditionally a day of rest for the undead and demonic, a day they believed to be horribly commercialized by humans, and it wasn't something they wanted to participate in and make worse. Which meant Giles could catch up on his filing and paperwork without interference.

At least it meant that until Willow _walked through a wall_ and nearly frightened him into an early grave. Catalogue cards went flying and completely inappropriate language may or may not have exploded out of his mouth.

Willow wrapped her arms around herself shyly, despite the very suggestive outfit she was wearing. "Hi."

It took him a bit to calm down, but she had time to explain that the town was under some kind of spell before Angel and Xander came into the library through much more conventional means; the door. Giles was quick to note that Xander was carrying a body. Willow's body. He laid it on an empty worktable as gently as he could.

Giles paled considerably, and Xander was at his side instantly. "Easy," he said with a southern English accent. "Have a seat before you topple. Now, I promise willow is very much alive. Her body is in suspended animation and her spirit is being projected out into the physical world. She'll be all right as long as we can find what's causing this and stop it."

Giles sat down obligingly, trying to stop his head from spinning. He couldn't help but stare at Willow's body, but Willow's ghost stepped in front to block his view. "Come on, Giles. We really need you."

Giles took a deep breath, letting out slowly to steady himself. He looked up at Xander, but he knew that it wasn't Xander he was talking to. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor. Now I've promised to help find Elizabeth. She saw Angel's face and ran off, didn't believe he was on her side."

Giles shook his head with confusion. "Elizabeth?"

Willow said, "It's Buffy. She dressed up as this girl from the 18th century, and now she's all, 'I can't do anything without men.'"

Giles looked at Xander again. Brown suit, blue pinstripes, square-framed spectacles, and Converse trainers. Southern English accent. The Doctor. _The Doctor!_ "Xander dressed as the Doctor? Wonderful. I have only one question for you before you go. When are you?"

The Time Lord raised an eyebrow at him in surprise. "Just got done visiting the coronation of Elizabeth II."

Giles nodded. "Understood. Can Xander hear us?"

"Yes, he's fully aware and he and I can talk. Why?"

"Xander, we're a bit ahead of him. Don't accidentally reveal anything he doesn't know."

The Doctor's eyes widened. A lot. "He understands. Blimey, thanks for the catch! All right, we'll be back. Cordelia, you stay here. It's safer. And we'll bring Elizabeth back here as well."

Giles nodded, then turned to the problem at hand as the alien and the vampire left the library. He couldn't believe it. The Doctor was in Sunnydale, however briefly!

Cordelia watched them go with a fist on her hip. "What's that guy's riff?"

Giles shrugged. "He's just very used to taking charge. It happens when one is a massively superior alien intelligence with nearly a thousand years of experience." He walked to where they'd laid Willow's body, wrapped in the sheet that was her costume, but for warmth, not to hide her. He gripped her hand. It was cold, and he shivered. "He was certain?"

Willow nodded. "Yeah. He scanned, ah, _me_ with that little blinky light thing."

Giles gave her a watery smile. "Sonic screwdriver. Right. Now the question we have to answer is what's different in how you, Buffy and Xander dressed tonight and how Cordelia dressed. What did she do differently?"

"Besides have style and class?" snarked Cordelia.

Giles pulled a face. "Clearly we have very different ideas on that point. No, it can't be anything so subjective as looks. It has to be a concrete difference between the costumes themselves. What did Xander actually purchase?"

Willow shrugged. "Just the screwdriver thing and the glasses. I bought the—the ghost costume, and Buffy rented that dress."

Giles's head bobbed to the side in contemplation, and he took his glasses off to polish them. "And you, Cordelia?"

She glared at him. "It's a rental, okay? And Partytown is not going to be happy with me."

Willow perked up. "Partytown. That's what's different. We went to that new place, Ethan's."

The Doctor looked around as he and Angel hit another intersection. _Bloody twisty little town!_ "Are you sure she came this way? My scans are useless with all this background interference."

Obviously very worried, Angel said, "No."

"Look, I'm sure she'll be all right," said the Doctor, trying to comfort the vampire. Odd, that.

But he knew better. " _Buffy_ would be all right. Elizabeth is helpless." He caught a whiff of her scent, and a flicker of hope crossed his face. "C'mon!"

Just across the street, unnoticed by either searcher, William the Bloody knelt before a small group of temporary child demons. "Did you hear that, my friends? Somewhere out here is the _tenderest_ meat you've ever tasted, and all we have to do is find her first!"

The name of the costume shop had sent a frisson up Giles's spine, and leaving Cordelia in the library with the body, Giles and Willow went to the shop to investigate. The shop looked trashed, but there didn't seem to be anyone inside, at least not in front. They both called out, not wanting to be accused of trespassing, but no one answered.

Willow found the idol in the back. "Giles-"

He came to see what she had found, and saw the image, its eyes glowing a dull, acid green. "Janus. Roman mythical god."

"What does this mean?"

He shrugged, still looking around. "Primarily the division of self; male and female, light and dark-"

"Chunky and creamy." Giles's head whipped around toward the voice. _Ethan Rayne._ "Oh, no, sorry. That's peanut butter."

Both fear and rage clouded the edges of his senses, but his vision focused like a tunnel on his former friend. "Willow, get out of here, now."

"But-"

"Now!" His tone brooked no argument, and Willow had the sense to listen. As she left through the curtain and headed back toward the library, he said, "Hello, Ethan." It was a struggle as he fought to control his emotions. This man represented all about himself that he hated, and his many, many regrets. Giles wasn't a fan of Doctor Who because of the scifi element, though that did tend to resemble life on the Hellmouth. No, he identified with the character of the Doctor, a lonely old man with horrors, regrets and guilt in his past, and finding redemption from the young people who had become his charges and friends.

And also, he was possessed of an old enemy who had once been a dear friend. "Hello, Ripper."

After finding Elizabeth and protecting her virtue from the horrid pirate who had found her, they had to convince her about Angel. She said to the Doctor, "But he's—he's a vampire!"

"Yes, he is. But he was given back the gift of his soul, and because of this, he is able to be a good man again. I promise, he is a friend." He willed the silly girl to believe him.

She allowed Angel to help her stand. "Really?"

"Absolutely."

Willow came running down the alley at that moment. "Guys!"

Angel turned to see her. "Willow?"

"Guys, you gotta get inside!" She pointed down to the other end of the alley. A blonde vampire in a leather jacket had led a group of other vampires and mini monsters into the alley.

Xander said, _That's Spike! We need to run!_

Angel pointed the other direction. "This way. Find an open warehouse."

"Right," said the Doctor.

Angel picked up Elizabeth and followed him, and Willow brought up the rear.

Unfortunately, an open warehouse was going to be their only protection, unless the Doctor could do something about that. The door was broken, but he managed to use the sonic to vibrate it loose. Then he shut it and sonicked the lock so it melted. He shouted, "Find out if there are any other ways in!"

After a moment or two Willow shouted, "Doctor, there's another door over here!" He ran to help secure the door but it proved futile. One of the demons ripped through the thin sheet metal of the main door. This door became their hatch, but before it could be used several of the demons had gone straight for Angel to restrain him, and Spike had cut Elizabeth away from the group. Two large vampires took hold of the Doctor, as well, and despite the fact that Time Lords are stronger than humans, he was no match for the two of them.

Spike was completely focused on Elizabeth. "Look at you," he said, his loose Cockney accent laced with patently false concern. "Shaking. Terrified. Alone. Lost little lamb." He moved closer with every word, and when he was leaning over her he gripped her head by the hair, moving her head so her jugular was exposed, while tears slid down her cheeks and she whimpered with fear.

Angel screamed, "No! Buffy!" He struggled against the ones holding him, to no avail.

The Doctor also struggled futilely against his captors. He yelled, "Don't do this! I swear you will regret this! Stop now!"

A sudden wind of magic passed over the town, and the Doctor was briefly very dizzy. Then his head cleared, and he was no longer being restrained. Not questioning his good fortune, he ran for Spike and pulled him off the girl. Her hair came with him!

Suddenly she stood up. Gone was the helpless Englishwoman, replaced by a strong, modern teen with straight shoulder-length blonde hair and an axe to grind. A wicked smirk curled the side of her mouth, and she said, "Hi, honey. I'm home." Then, dress or no, she started beating the vampire. He was kicked into a pile of rubbish and came up with a length of pipe.

Most of the monsters were now children again, and the Doctor moved to protect them. That was when he saw Xander, and he realized they'd been separated. He grinned, and Xander grinned right back. _Brilliant!_

Angel got rid of the rest of the vampires, dusting one while the others ran. Only Spike was left, and Buffy was using the pipe to make him regret his choices. Finally, she jabbed him in the stomach with it. As he groaned in pain she said, "You know what?" Then she rammed the pipe under his chin and he flew across the room into the pile of crates he'd been holding her against. "It's good to be me."

Spike came up rubbing his chin with one hand and holding his gut with the other. Looking around, he saw that he was alone, and took off. Buffy let him go, knowing there could be other opportunistic demons around and not wanting to leave the children.

Xander came up to her. "Hey, Buff. Welcome back."

"Yeah, you too. Looks like your passenger didn't leave, though."

The Doctor smiled at them. "Nope. I'm not just a character that was laid over a real person, unlike Lady Elizabeth. Whatever power was used to make this night happen had essentially wrapped me around Xander like a shell. Whatever it was has stopped, so the other characters have simply returned to being clothes, but it took energy to pull me here, and it'll take at least as much to send me back."

Xander looked around. "Where's Willow?"

Now the Doctor's smile was much wider. "Back where she belongs, in her own body."

Angel came up to Buffy. "You okay?"

"Yeah." She waved a hand at the clutch of kids. "I guess we'd better get these guys back to their parents." She looked at the Doctor. "You all right?"

"Me? Oh, I'm always all right. I think I'll head back to the school, check on Willow, and that Cordelia. Seriously, though, Xander. Why are all your friends girls, but you don't have a girlfriend?"

Xander glared at him. "Rude, Doc."

He chuckled, pulling on an ear. "Perhaps. And don't call me that, please. Right then, I'm off. I supposed we'll be seeing each other for a while until I can figure out how to get back to my own universe."

"Right." Xander looked thoughtful, now, wondering if by his impetuous decision he had stranded the Doctor here.

The Doctor reached the school about the same time that Giles returned. He couldn't help but notice that the other man's knuckles bore the signs of having delivered punishment to someone's face. He decided the questions could wait until the two girls they'd left inside the building had gone home, though.

Giles had his own questions, like what had gone wrong. Why was the Doctor still here, despite the spell having been broken? "Hello again, Doctor."

"Mr. Giles."

He smiled. "Rupert, please. Well, if you haven't been sent home, at least you aren't stuck to a sixteen-year-old boy any longer."

The Doctor laughed, looking down at his shoes for a moment. "Right. Mind, he's not bad, got a good head on his shoulders, cares for his friends. But definitely not a situation I'd want to be in permanently."

"Neither is living life in a linear fashion. Besides, that universe needs you. We'll have to find you a way home. Did everything else seem to turn out all right?"

He nodded. "Yes. We should find Willow right back where she belongs. I've got about a million questions about this universe, questions I'll have to be able to answer before I attempt to go home. Any method I could think of that would allow me to cross back into my own universe would likely rip the two of them apart. Actually, I very recently had an adventure in a completely different one with my R-my traveling companion. Though, I guess you already knew about that." He shook his head in wonder. "How is it that you know about me, you and Xander? I mean I think I'm flattered that he wanted to be me for Halloween, but where does that knowledge come from?"

Giles took a deep breath, not sure how he was going to take this. "In this universe, there are no Time Lords, of course, but somehow your life has still been observed, and over—over time there have been human men who looked like you, or enough like you to pass, and those men have been-well-actors." He looked him in the eye, waiting for his reaction.

" _Actors!?_ It's a television programme?" The Doctor's eyes were practically bugging out of his head.

Giles couldn't help it, and he laughed at the Doctor's discomfiture. "Not just a programme, but the longest running science fiction series in the world having just reached its thirty-fourth year, spanning ten of your lives, and holding the Guinness record for number of episodes in a science fiction programme. Only soap operas have run longer."

The Doctor laughed too, the corners of his eyes crinkling deeply. "That's embarrassing, that is! And that's how you and him know my future. How much more have you got than me?"

"Just to the end of the year, relatively speaking."

They reached the library at that point, greeted by the melodious sound of Cordelia bitching. "I mean, it's like he was completely ignoring me."

Willow's voice was very bored. "I can't imagine why."

"I know, right?"

"Giles!" Willow hopped off the long table where she'd been sitting and ran to him for a hug, grateful to be able to get one.

Then she saw the Doctor. "Oh! How come you're still here? Is Xander okay?"

"Oh, he's fine," he said. "Alone in his head again. The energy wasn't holding me to him any longer, so I just sort of slid off. But where Elizabeth was just a suit of clothes, as was your temporary death, I'm a living person, and while the energy pulled me here, the lack of it can't get me home. Frankly, I'm at a loss. I know nothing of magic, other than understanding that words have power."

Giles nodded. "That's why you keep your birth name hidden, yes?"

"Yes. Strangely enough, ancient Gallifrey did have a culture of magic users; in fact they nearly dominated the planet. It was their war with the Great Vampires, in fact, that weakened them enough for the Time Lords to take over. They had to finish the Vampires off, of course, and the Pythia, their dictator, was so incensed at losing, she cursed the Time Lords with sterility, a curse which has lasted tens of thousands of years. I don't doubt the power of magic, but I don't have a clue about it either." He grinned. "That's a rare thing, that is."

That made Giles and willow both smile. Giles said, "Well, you two should both be getting home for the night." Both girls agreed and left the library. "And since you seem to be stranded, I have a guest bedroom in my flat you're welcome to, Doctor."

The Doctor nodded. "Thanks." Then he pointed to Giles's hands. "What happened tonight, Rupert?"

All traces of levity fell from Giles's face. "You'll have heard of Janus, Roman god of doors and transitions, as well as chaos and division." At the Doctor's nod of acknowledgment, he continued. "The man who did this is an old-um- _acquaintance_ of mine, and he has always served the chaotic side of that particular deity.

"When we were young, we were quite close, good friends. But he showed me the darker side of magic, and I was so _captivated_ by him, and by the power of what we were doing-." He shuddered. "He convinced me, and the others, that no one would be hurt. Then someone was. Someone died." He was staring out at nothing, remembering. Then he looked at the Doctor. "I blame myself, of course. But I blame him, too. He was the one with the knowledge, and the power, and he reveled in that darkness we had unleashed."

Perhaps sensing that Giles needed to talk to someone about everything this had brought up, the Doctor stayed silent.

"I needed to find out how to stop the spell. But I used that as an excuse. More than all that, I needed to make him feel at least some small part of that pain. I'm not proud of it."

They had sat together in a pair of the chairs that surrounded the work table Willow had been laying on, and for a few moments, they remained silent. Then the Doctor started to talk. "My best friend growing up was a boy named Koschei. He and I went to the Academy together, were inducted on the same day. We were friends, but that induction ceremony forever changed him, made him go mad. He developed a lust for dominance and war, and always he heard drums in his head."

"The Master." Giles had watched the older series, as well.

The Doctor nodded. "I had to put him down more than once. But always in the back of my mind is the friend I loved."

Giles stood and went to the book cage, where he reached for a particularly thick tome. He opened it to reveal that it was a dummy, hiding a secret stash of something highly illegal on a public school campus; a fifty-year-old Scotch. He pulled a pair of glasses from a different shelf and brought them out into the workspace.

He poured them both a generous glass before re-corking the bottle, then handed one of them to the Doctor. "To old friends," he said, holding up his own glass.

The Doctor thought for a moment, then raised his own. "To new friends, Rupert."

Giles smiled a wearily. "I'll drink to that, Doctor."

And they did.


	2. Choices

**Chapter 2: Choices**

This wasn't the first time the Doctor had been stuck somewhere, certainly not the first time he'd been stuck on Earth. But this was the first time he had been stuck where he had absolutely no idea how he was going to get back. The only advanced technology he had access to was his sonic screwdriver, and while this universe's 1997 Earth was right on target with his own, that wasn't saying a lot when one was trying to cross universes.

Of course in this universe, he would have one resource not available in his own; magic, and that made him both excited and uneasy. He was doing as much research as he could, and he was being helped a great deal by both Rupert and his lady friend, Jenny Calendar. They had helped him to research exactly what Ethan Rayne had done to make the chaos of Halloween possible, and once they were certain of his steps they would begin changing them, trying to come up with a way to send him home.

It should be possible, even fairly easy, to send him into that universe. Janus was not only, or even primarily, a god of chaos. In fact, he was more about transitions; beginnings and doorways. He was even loosely associated with time, because he could look both forward and backward. But the trick would be to aim the effect so as to bring him as closely as possible to the moment and place he had left without running into himself, showing up too early, or putting him inside a wall, or the Time Rotor, or inside a star or a black hole.

Such calculations were much easier with the computers on the TARDIS, but here they were using a lot of what looked, and even felt, like ritual to generate these effects, and the components were going to be a lot more difficult to tune than the precise technical instruments he was used to using. Magic is still science, of course, but it's based on words and organic energies rather than on numbers and inorganic energies. He was trying to learn a new set of scientific languages and laws, totally foreign to that which he had spent his lifetimes working with, the only exception, of course, being the power of a name.

But many of the items he was going to need for this magical machine were going to cost a pretty penny, and that meant the Doctor was going to have to get a job. Oh, he could do a lot with the psychic paper, but the kinds of people who were likely to own these kinds of components were a lot more likely to have psychic ability than the general population, limiting the usefulness of the paper in purchasing such items.

He hadn't had to hold down a job in several centuries, not since he worked for UNIT back in his third life. This could be either very interesting or horribly dull. Somehow, in this town, he suspected it would be both.

Buffy, Xander, Willow and Cordelia all had a surprise waiting for them when they got to their World History class. Instead of Mrs. Banks very pregnant self in front of their class was a familiar man in a brown suit with blue pinstripes, square framed spectacles sitting across his nose and a cat-got-the-cream grin across his mouth. All four of them stared at him before taking their seats. Buffy just shrugged, as did Willow, both figuring they'd get the scoop later from Giles. Cordelia rolled her eyes and took her seat.

But Xander came up to the desk. "I need to talk to you after class, if that's okay?"

The Doctor looked concerned. "Are you all right?"

He shrugged and looked down. "Just dealing with a few leftovers, if you catch my drift."

The alien's eyebrows flew into his hairline, but he nodded. "All right, then. We'll talk. Next hour is lunch anyway, yes?" At Xander's nod, he said, "Okay. Go on to your seat."

The last bell rang and all the students made their way to their seats. The Doctor gave them a minute to calm down, then shut the door. "Hello, everyone. My name is Doctor John Smith. Mrs. Banks has taken her expected leave of absence just a little early, so I'll be handling her class for the rest of the school year. As I understand it, you lot have just been reading up on the French Revolution. Impressions?"

One boy said, "Well, it seems like Louis XVI was just sort of a weak king."

The Doctor nodded. "I think that's fair. Really, Versailles could have been burning down around his ears and he'd hardly have noticed it. Someone else?"

Cordelia started in from a perspective wholly unique to her worldview. "I just don't see why everyone's always picking on Marie Antoinette. I can so relate to her. She worked really hard to look that food, and people just don't appreciate that kind of effort. And I know the peasants were all depressed-"

Xander interrupted, I think you mean 'oppressed'."

She glared at him. "Whatever. They were cranky. So they're like, 'Let's lose some heads.' Ughh! That's fair. And, and Marie Antoinette cared about them. She was gonna let them have cake!"

"Well," said the Doctor, "I've never actually heard that perspective before. Allow me to clear up a few things. First, the Queen never actually said that. It was more likely an earlier princess of France by about a century. However, the sentiment, which Marie would have likely agreed with, was one of complete disregard for the poor. The word that was translated 'cake' was actually brioche, an enriched and lightly sweetened bread that was far more expensive than an ordinary baguette. It would be like you telling someone, 'I can't afford to eat a hamburger.' Then they sneer at you and say, 'then eat fillet mignon instead.' The plight of the poor was beneath her because she was born to privilege, and she believed that she deserved it."

Cordelia frowned. "Well it's not like the crops dying was her fault."

"No, you're right about that. The crops died because of a short global cooling. But as a student of fashion, can you imagine how much food could have been bought with even one of those elaborate court gowns of hers?"

Cordelia sat back, thinking. Happy to let her work through it in her own mind, the Doctor moved on to other students.

When the class ended, both Cordelia and Xander were waiting for him. Cordelia said, "So she was really just a big snob, huh."

He said, "Well, she was. But look at it from the other side of the coin as well. Did she deserve to die for it?" Seeing the girl's uncertainty, he said, "Nothing in life is just black and white. Life is a high-definition tapestry of history and possibilities, of motivations and choices. Take the time to look at history and remember that it is made up of real people, and I think it'll surprise you."

Cordelia nodded, uncharacteristically deep in thought, and walked away. Xander watched her go, then said quietly, "You really think she's gonna change, Doc?"

He shrugged. "That's up to her. I only offer perspective. And please don't call me that." It was bad enough when Jack used to do it.

"Sorry." Xander looked nervous.

"What is it you wanted to talk to me about? Leftovers?"

"Scattered images. Feelings. Ten other faces than the one you're wearing, and snapshots of a war that makes the French Revolution look like a tea party." He scuffed a shoe on the floor. "It's not nearly everything, 'cause there's no way that would have fit in my head. I think I understand science class better, though, and history."

The Doctor let out a low whistle. "That's a lot to deal with for someone your age." He paused, looking intently at Xander's face. "And that's not all of it, am I right?"

Xander shrugged, tense and nervous. "How do you know if something is a fixed point?"

The Doctor sighed. "I thought you might have looked. Whose timeline was it?" Being a fan, Xander had known that he could see Time, and so he had taken advantage of that brief moment of time when he could see it too. He'd taken a look into the future.

"Buffy."

"Understandable. She's one of your best friends. You're even a little bit in love with her. And she puts her life on the line every day for the sake of the human race. To be honest, if you weren't concerned, I'd worry. Did you see an event or just the Time energy?" If he'd seen something specific, it could have become fixed, but-"

"Just the energy. Thick string of light, chasing back the dark, and then a snip of Parca Morta's shears cuts it off while it's still bright and shining, and the thread is gone, the candle snuffed out before its time." Xander shook his head, trying to clear it. "It's clear, but is it fixed? I don't know how to tell."

"Well, the good news is, you haven't fixed it by looking. It's why I don't look at my own timeline or that of my companions. History can _usually_ be rewritten, so long as you haven't already read it. That said, as you're aware, some things _have_ to happen, or everything else crumbles, and Reapers can get into the world."

Xander nodded. Shaking with the knowledge that he might have to allow his friend to die. He looked the Doctor in the eye, though, and he asked anyway. "Is it fixed?"

"Xander, why would you want to know that? It's not tomorrow or something, is it?"

"No. It's three and a half years away."

"Why would you ever want to carry that kind of knowledge around? That's-Xander, listen to me. That is the kind of burden a Time Lord has to bear, but there is no reason for you to have to. You're young, and human, and so full of potential yourself. Don't ask me again. I won't answer. You deserve better than that."

Xander wanted to storm off, wanted to throw a fit, to scream, to demand-but he knew that the Doctor was right. Right now, he knew for sure that Buffy had three and a half years left on this Earth, but he didn't know for sure if she would have longer or not. Best to believe it could be changed and fight like hell to make it happen than to sit around and bemoan the fact that it could not. He took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry I asked."

But the Doctor said, "Don't be. You're thinking, and you're being careful. That's more than could be said for most teenagers." He gave him a brilliant smile. "You're turning into a fine young man, Xander. If I was going to be worn by anyone like an overcoat for Halloween, I'm glad it was you."

The corner of Xander's mouth turned up. "Thanks, Doctor."

His name was Billy Fordham, but Buffy called him Ford. He had been friends with her in middle school, was in fact her middle school crush. Xander didn't really like the idea of her with anyone who wasn't him, but better Live Boy than Dead Boy. Still, there was something about him that rubbed him the wrong way, and Xander vowed to himself to be watchful; not interfering, but not sleeping on the job, either.

At the Bronze, while Xander, Willow and Ford were all waiting for Buffy to show, Ford talked a lot about Buffy; nice, safe stories from childhood which might get him in hot water with Buffy when she found out, but not anything really revealing of Ford. In fact, he didn't talk about himself at all. He really focused completely on Buffy, and even though Xander and Willow had no problem using the information they had gained about their friend, it still made him wary of the other teen.

When Buffy arrived and Willow tattled about the 9th grade swim suit competition, Buffy was horrified. "Oh my God, Ford, stop that! The more people you tell, the more people I have to kill."

Ford gave her a rakish smirk. "You can't touch me, Summers. I know all your darkest secrets."

Xander coughed a little and turned back to the pool table to chase the eight ball. "Care to make a small wager on that?"

Willow gave Xander a bug-eyed look.

Buffy just shook her head. "I'm gonna go get a drink. Ford, try not to talk."

After Ford irritatingly sunk the eight, they racked the balls back up, intending to wait for Buffy to come back so they could all play a game together. They noticed that she was talking to Angel at the bar. Xander rolled his eyes. Willow said, "That's Angel."

Seeming concerned, Ford said, "He's not in school, is he? He looks older than her."

Xander took a drink to hide his grin. "You're not wrong."

After a while, Buffy came back to the table, and a confused-looking Angel followed her. She didn't bring back a drink. Ford mentioned it.

"Not thirsty."

"Hey, Angel," said Willow.

Ford also said, "Hi."

Buffy introduced them. "This is Ford. We went to school together in LA."

Angel was quite civil. "Nice to meet you," he said, and they shook hands.

Ford jumped a little. "Whoa. Cold hands."

Xander said again, "You're not wrong." Buffy glared at him. He just shrugged.

Angel tried to move things along, not knowing where all the tension in the room was coming from. "So, you're here visiting Buffy?"

"No, here to stay." Angel froze. "Just moved down."

Willow said, "Hey Angel, do you want to play?" Willow hated confrontation. It was the cause of some of her best babbling rambles.

Buffy sensed it, but she wasn't ready to deal, or to let Angel off the hook. Willow had told Xander that Buffy had seen Angel with some dark-haired girl the previous night, and whether Angel knew it or not, he was being punished for a perceived indiscretion. "Y'know, it's getting really crowded in here tonight. Um, I'm a little hot." She turned to Ford. "You wanna take a walk?"

Buffy practically dragged Ford out of the building. Xander said, "Okay, once more with tension."

Angel was already well on his way to full blown panic. "He just moved here?"

Xander nodded. "And boy, does he move fast."

Angel disappeared, much to Willow's dismay. Xander sighed and sat down on a chair next to the pool table. "You know, I hate to be on Angel's side in any situation, but-"

Willow said, "Really?"

"Yeah." He looked toward the door. "Ford's bad news."

That night Xander couldn't help himself. Willow was not the only computer nerd in the room any more, not with what he had picked up from the Doctor. His internet speed wasn't the greatest, but with a little jiggery-pokery his humble computer was setting new records for what any system of its size should have been capable of, even with the very best connections. He wasn't as good as the Doctor would have been, but for a human, he was very good.

And he intended to find out about Billy Fordham.

It was obvious, quickly, that Ford didn't want to be found out about. All of his records had been expunged, even during time which he had legitimately known Buffy as her schoolmate. He was not registered as a student at Sunnydale High, or any other school. he did still have a Social Security number, and from that, Xander was able to find medical records from City of Hope in LA under a false name.

 _Why_? Xander sat back in his creaky office chair and stared through the dirty splotches on the ceiling. Why would a terminal cancer patient not only run away, but eliminate any trace of their official existence? Why did a terminal cancer patient do anything? Xander tried to imagine it, feeling the certainty of death creeping up on you in the bloom of youth, seeing its swirling black cloak just out of the corner of your eye, as if a vampire were stalking you, one that liked to take its time and play with its food.

 _Scared. Desperate. Willing to do almost anyth-_ Xander sat up. The only record that wasn't wiped out was Ford's current address, and that was a little footnote on a lease, but something any half-way competent hacker was going to find. Scared and desperate, and suddenly he shows up in Vamp City with an in with the one person they're all interested in eating.

Did Ford somehow know Buffy was the Slayer? Xander could see someone in Ford's position thinking that being turned was a good alternative. The records detailed a truly horrible prognosis. Not a fun way to go. And Buffy would be one hell of a bargaining chip if he could somehow trap her. That thought made him think about this Sunset Club that he listed as his address, and then he started hacking into the public records department at City Hall. He wanted to know how this place was built.

It was an old bomb shelter, and there had been recent construction permits, including the services of a locksmith. Oh, it was a trap, all right. the only question was what kind?

Xander wasn't surprised to find that the Doctor was spending his time after school with Giles's books. Despite all that manic energy, the alien was a rabid bibliophile, and he was trying to understand how magic worked so he could get home without ripping any holes in the multiverse. Besides, he'd probably have the entire occult library read by the end of the night.

"Hello, Doctor."

The Doctor looked up from his reading of the old Romanian _Vampyre_ , the overhead lights glinting off his specs. "Ah, Xander! You know, I don't think I've ever been quite so fascinated before! It's amazing how different one change can cause a universe to be, given enough time. This business about the Slayer, for instance. Why would humanity pin its hopes on one girl at a time? Why not build an army? Or, and I rather prefer this approach, why not do the job yourself instead of creating a child soldier in the first place?"

Xander wasn't fooled. "Fascinated" here might as well be translated to horrified and angry, but this had started thousands of years ago. They didn't have a TARDIS, so it couldn't be changed now. "Buffy'll be glad you care. Need a bit of a favor." The Doctor raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. "I think Buffy's being led into a trap, and I need to be able to scan the structure. You mind if I borrow the sonic for a few hours?"

He almost said something scathing about stupid apes, but he stopped. There was a lot more to this boy than that. He wasn't planning to abuse the tool, and he understood how to use it properly. He took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "All right, I'll trust you. But I have it on very good authority that toasters do not need to be more sonic, nor do you need to get soap operas from Sto."

Xander grinned. Rose had forever been getting on to the Doctor for upgrading Jackie's appliances. Of course, Xander knew what was coming for the Doctor, so his smile didn't last long, and he became more serious. "Not a problem. I just want her to have a heads up."

"Good." He handed the sonic screwdriver to Xander. "Here you go. D'you remember the settings?"

He nodded. "I won't let you down, Doctor. I'll be back here around midnight." Then he turned to leave the library and meet Willow and Angel.

The Doctor frowned at the boy's retreating back. He had seen a flash of some painful emotion when he had mentioned Rose and Jackie. Something was coming, something Xander had previous knowledge of because of the TV programme he had been emulating for Halloween. A shiver of foreboding crawled up his spine. That something dealt with either Rose or Jackie, and he honestly couldn't imagine that Jackie would be the character sympathetic enough to cause him pain.

He really needed to get back home.

Xander, Willow and Angel walked up to the entrance of the old bomb shelter, Xander scanning the structure as they approached. "That lock is _really_ solid." He looked over at the other two. "I'd say this is definitely a Slayer trap."

Willow said, "I didn't find anything incriminating in his record."

Xander said, "That's because he hacked it."

Angel agreed. "No records is incriminating enough. He doesn't want anything to be found _but_ this address, and that's a trap." He knocked on the door, and the little sliding door at the top opened up, revealing the eyes of the doorman. "We're friends of Ford."

The doorman opened up, not very security minded, and the three of them walked into the Sunset Club. the atmosphere was very movie-vamp chic, obviously decorated by teenagers, specifically teenagers who read way too much Anne Rice and not enough Bram Stoker. They thought vampires were some kind of tragic figures, not demons.

Willow said, "Boy, we blend right in."

Xander smiled at her. "Just walk around like you own the place. You'll be fine."

"Let's look around," said Angel. "You two check out downstairs."

Xander raised an eyebrow at him, but said nothing about his taking command. He and Willow explored a little of the slow party atmosphere. "You noticing a theme here?"

"As in 'Vampires! Yay!'?"

"That's the one."

After a few minutes they were approached by a blonde girl in a dark red dress with matching lipstick and jeweled choker. She was literally inviting herself to be bitten. "You guys are newbies. I can tell."

Xander forestalled Willow's natural babble. "Yes we are. We were invited by a friend, sort of. Why don't you tell us all about it?"

"We welcome anyone who is interested in the Lonely Ones."

Angel popped up out of nowhere, and Xander had a random thought about sewing a bell into his jacket. "Vampires."

"Yeah, why do you think they're lonely," asked Xander. "It's really easy for them to 'make' friends." He referred, of course, to the fact that they could turn anyone they wanted. "Of course, they usually just eat them instead."

But the girl argued her point. "So many people have that misconception. But they who walk in the night are not interesting in harming anyone. They are creatures above us. Exalted!"

Angel sneered at her. "You're a fool."

The girl huffed off, and Xander shook his head in frustration. "Are you really competing for the 'Rude and Not Ginger' title?"

"Now nobody's gonna talk to us," whined Willow.

Angel replied, "I've seen enough. I've seen this type before, scared children making up bedtime stories of friendly vampires to comfort themselves in the dark."

Willow, ever the peacemaker, said, "Is that so bad? Sometimes the dark can get pretty dark. Sometimes you need a story."

"These people don't know anything about vampires," Angel grumped. "What they are, how they live, how they dress-"

A dark-haired teen came down the stairs behind Angel. They were dressed identically, save that Angel's jacket was a bit more well-worn. Xander smirked, and Angel had the grace to be just a little embarrassed. The three of them went up the stairs to leave the club, and Xander did one more scan of the doors as they walked out of them. He felt eyes on the back of his neck, but he just figured that Angel's attitude had soured the attitudes in the room.

Once they got clear of the building, Xander looked at the scans, reading the tiny Gallifreyan hieratic characters as easily as if they were English. "That place is dangerous. The walls are three feet of concrete, the door and frame are three-inch steel, and there's a time-lock on the door that can only be opened from the outside. That's all the proof we need. You'll tell Buffy it's a trap." Xander didn't care that he was giving orders to someone two hundred and fifty-odd years older than him. Buffy had to be warned, and Angel was going her way.

Xander returned the Doctor's sonic that night, just like he said, but he didn't leave as the Doctor expected him to. Instead he sat down on one of the library chairs. For a moment, neither of them said anything. For all that Xander's gab had changed with the addition of the Doctor's gob, he still wasn't sure where to begin.

"Cat nun got your tongue?"

Xander blew a laugh through his nose. "Yuck."

"Well-"

"I'm not just gonna sit around while she walks into a trap."

The Doctor looked at the scans Xander had taken. "I wouldn't expect you to."

Xander sighed and sat back in his chair. "She will. That whole thing on the Game Station? Sending Rose away for her own good? I can so see Buffy doing that, with any of us." He looked at the Doctor. "I get why. She wants us to not get hurt, because she loves us." Subtle? Not. "But I think Rose had the right idea. It's better to get out there and do the right thing than to be safe."

The Doctor stared at Xander, his expression unreadable. "She won't thank you for it if you get hurt or die."

"But could I live with myself if I didn't do everything in my power to help her?"

They were silent for a moment, both deep in their thoughts. The alien man asked, "What are you planning?"

"First to make sure she has all the information."

"And then?"

Xander grinned. "I've got an idea!"

If there were strange smells coming from the chemistry lab the next day, no one said anything. They kind of expected it. What no one could explain, though, were the open plastic eggs in the trash that said "Silly Putty(TM)" on the side.

Xander waited with Willow on the stairs after their last class of the day for Buffy. She saw them and almost turned in the other direction, but Willow called out to her and she rallied herself. Willow said, "Did Angel-?"

"He told me everything."

"I'm sorry we kept stuff from you."

Xander said, "Yeah, me too. We didn't want to just accuse the guy of being bad news though, with no proof."

"It's okay." Buffy was still angry, but she got it. She knew that if they'd accused first, she'd have blown them off, especially Xander and Angel, who both had jealousy issues.

Xander said, "I know you're going to confront him, but you should know that his place is a trap designed with you in mind." Then he held out a purple egg for her to take. "This is stabilized Nitro-9. Don't open it until you're ready to use it. Pay attention to where the lock is before you go in, because there's no door knob on the inside. Stick the putty on the door, give it a good whack, then run. You'll only have about a second before it blows."

Buffy smiled slowly at him. "You made plastique in the science lab?"

Xander shrugged. "Closer to dynamite, but yeah." He looked her right in the eyes. "You'll always have us to back you up, Buffy."

Her smile widened and warmed. "Thanks, guys."

Buffy walked off, but now they knew she'd be okay. They could relax, at least a little, knowing she wouldn't be trapped, that she'd have a better chance of surviving the day.

Willow continued to watch Buffy as she walked off, but she asked Xander, "You made dynamite in the chemistry lab? I didn't know they had all the ingredients."

"They didn't. I made Nitro-9 and stabilized it with Silly Putty(TM). It's a chemical one of the Doctor's former companions came up with. And what about you? You had Angel in your bedroom!"

"Yeah, but he just wants me for my mind."

The two left the hallway laughing.

The Doctor shook his head in sadness. Xander, with what was quickly becoming a habit, had come to the library to talk to him after they had left Ford to his self-imposed fate, and he had told him about the other boy's illness and his bid for immortality at the hands of William the Bloody. It wasn't that the Time Lord was easier to talk to than, say, Willow, but Xander wanted to learn as much from him as possible before he figured out how to get home. "Horrible. We'd all like to think we'd never do something like that, but one never knows how they'll react to a situation until they're living it."

As gently as possible, not wanting to bring up bad memories from the War, Xander said, "You do. You'll do the right thing, even with an impossible choice." Like the choice between your homeworld, your family, and the rest of the universe.

A grimace somewhere between pain and gratefulness curled one side of his mouth. "Thanks for that. And most people have some kind of regret in their past, something they did or had to do that eats away at them later in life."

Xander smiled at that. "Probably. But, and I hope you don't take this the wrong way, brining you here won't be one of them. How's it going, getting back?"

"Well, near as I've been able to tell," he said, grateful for the change in topic, "Janus will be able to send me back. Rupert, Jenny, and I have mostly figured out what Ethan Rayne did, and from what I've learned of the laws of this word-based science, we can extrapolate what will be needed to replicate the reality modulator. But there are several items of financial significance on that list of parts, so I needed to get a job."

"So you just have to get money for parts?"

"Yep," he said, popping the p. "And then I'll be headed home." The Doctor looked at Xander. "And what will I find when I get there?"

Xander stared at him, shocked. "A-Are you really asking me to give you future information? Won't that make it-won't that fix it?"

"You're right of course." He sighed and sat back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked. But when I mentioned Rose and Jackie-well let's just say I'm a bit worried."

Xander looked at his shoes. "If I can figure out a way to warn you before you leave, I will. But I'll try to keep the timeline as uncertain as possible."

The Doctor said, "You've already told me one thing, though."

"I did?"

Worry filled the Doctor's face. "You've told me I'll want to change it."

 _Notes: Sorry this took so long. RL threw me a curve, and I don't really care for most of this episode, but it's important to let the Doctor and Xander's relationship grow. (Not that kind, you pervs! The Doctor only has eyes for Rose! ;) )_

 _I've already made a couple of decisions about certain people's fates. This series is going to be half merger and half transformation. There_ _ **are**_ _some fixed points, here, things that can't change or the rest of the timeline will suffer. But not everything is a fixed point just because it's canon. Something really has to allow the world to be changed in a fundamental way or become part of a time traveler's personal timeline to become fixed. Examples of fixed points in Doctor Who include the death of Adelaide Brooks and of Amy and Rory. History can be rewritten, but not once you've read it, which is why Xander is being so careful._

 _Thanks to my two reviewers, AWandersHaven and James Birdsong. I'm glad to have given you both something to enjoy, and I hope I continue to do so._


	3. Our Dark Times

_Author's Note: This chapter really kicked my butt. It insisted on being longer than I wanted, and I still didn't get all the Xander time in here that I wanted. With the next chapter being what it is, I'm not sure how to get it in there, either. (shrug) Oh, well. I'll figure it out._

 _Thanks to everyone who reviewed! It's really been uplifting to see those things. Tomorrow's my birthday, so I'm taking a day off from writing. Should I make the next one into two chapters? It's two episodes, so probably, right?_

 _Enjoy!_

 **Chapter 3: Our Dark Times**

 _Thick smoke billowed out of various buildings, and even from the Citadel itself, punctuated often by green bolts of plasma from ship-sized exterminators. Everywhere there were people running, screaming. There were Daleks in the city! Worse, if it were possible, the Time Lords of the High Council were up in one of their towers trying to bring about the end of reality itself in order to win the war. A single thought roared out of his mind, a thought that encompassed all that he was about to do to stop both sides, to stop both sides, to stop the war and return sanity to the universe._

 _No more!_

With a start, Xander shot up in bed, barely able to stop himself from screaming. He couldn't stop the tears. _Gallifrey. The fall of Arcadia. The Moment_. All these horrible things from the Time War were haunting his nightmares. The Doctor had ended the war, but at such a terrible price. He'd had no choice but to kill all those innocent people, including billions of children, in order to stop reality itself from dying.

Xander hadn't slept well for the last couple of weeks, his subconscious trying to catch up with all the memories he'd gotten from the Doctor on Halloween. He hadn't gotten all nine hundred and two years of memories, but it felt like all the memories from the Time War were right there, probably because it had only been two and a half years since it ended.

A weird thought entered his head. _Do I have PTSD?_

He snorted at the thought. Of course he did. So did the Doctor. But there was no one he could really trust enough to go to for treatment. Any medical professional would have him committed in two seconds. The Doctor was in the same boat, save that he had it far worse for having actually experienced it. Giles would listen, but he wasn't a trained psychologist. And the rest were just kids like him, mostly just trying to deal with the Sunny-weirdness and survive to talk about it.

Xander blew a breath through his fingers as he ran them over his face. Knowing he wouldn't be getting any more sleep tonight, he went to the card table that was his desk and turned on his computer. While it was running through its boot cycle, he pulled on a pair of sweats over his boxers, then typed in _post traumatic stress_. The web wasn't yet as big as it would soon explode into being, thought, and the site Web MD wasn't yet a glimmer in it's programmer's eye.

With a sigh, he realized he would have to get into the library for the information, and his looking for it would alert Giles. Mentally, he shrugged. It wasn't like he was ashamed of it, and they weren't really his memories, but he didn't want anyone feeling pity for him. If he could work through it on his own he would, but honestly, he was dubious. And if not, what was he going to do?

The Doctor jolted awake, the flames of Arcadia still burning behind his eyes. With a shaky breath he threw his head back into his pillow. 2.4 billion children, and he was the one to kill them. Idly, he wondered if the nightmares would ever stop, but seriously, he doubted it. Good thing he only needed an hour or two of sleep a night, because that was all he was ever getting again.

With a sigh, the Doctor swung his legs over the side of the bed. Really, he was grateful for Giles offer of a guestroom. It allowed him to spend all of the money he made teaching on the parts for the reality modulator. But he hated sitting still, living life in the right order, and sleeping without the TARDIS humming in his mind. Really, she was the only person he had in his mind anymore, and the silence without her was deafening. He missed her, and he missed Rose.

Rose Tyler. He could admit, at least to himself, that he was in love with her, but he didn't think he could do anything about it. Right now, he was getting a taste of what being without her would be like, and that was without the pain of actually losing her. He was working his way back to her, but he still felt so lonely without her here. How much worse would it be when he eventually lost her? How much worse than that would it be if he allowed them to be more than friends? Was he a coward? Perhaps, but he was sure that losing her after loving her would kill him where all the Daleks, dictators and aliens had failed. Why would he set himself up like that?

And yet, how could he not? He loved her and he was fairly certain she had feelings for him, as well. They were close, and they both wanted to be closer. But he was afraid. He was a coward, running from her like he ran from everything else. He was breaking the promise of his name. "Never cruel or cowardly, never give up, never give in." If he couldn't even follow his own hearts did he deserve to be called Doctor?

And right now, did it matter? He was stuck in a different universe, clawing his way back to her, and until he could do that, he couldn't do anything either way. Pushing away the nightmares he stood up and went into the kitchen to put on the tea kettle, thankful that Giles was British and had British tea. Americans liked their tea bags far too much, and you literally could not find bulk tea in stores.

As the water heated, the Doctor let his thoughts drift to the reality modulator. He had a list of components, and that list still boggled his mind. He had to get an idol of the Roman god Janus, one which focused on the transitional aspect of his jurisdiction, twenty-four candles to represent Time, and white charcoal to draw the symbols which would focus the ritual. The arrangement itself was like an engine. The fuel for that engine, in the original ritual, had been the energy of the people wearing the costumes, but in his case, the only person that would be affected by the spell was him, so he'd had to come up with a fuel source, and he had determined that a small quantity of his blood would suffice. Time Lord blood was full of Artron energy, ready to trigger a regeneration, so it was perfect for this. The idol itself was going to be the most expensive part of the machine, because it had to be genuine, an object created in faith for ritual purposes, and with most Roman deities, that required an antique. That was what was going to give him the most trouble.

Of course, the final piece of the puzzle was a way to aim the machine so as to reach the right place and time. But he already had that piece; his TARDIS key. Even if the ritual somehow could find other TARDISes, the key was unique to his own, and she'd know where and when she needed to be to catch him.

The kettle was about to whistle, so the Doctor took it off the stove, not wanting to wake Rupert. The man got little enough sleep at night guiding his Slayer. He certainly didn't need his alien houseguest waking him in the middle of the night.

Which is why he was surprised when Rupert's bedroom door opened to reveal the very tired man in light-weight pajamas. He looked up and saw the doctor with the kettle. "Thank God you understand the need for tea."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at him. "Trouble sleeping?"

He shrugged, reaching into the cupboard for his tea leaves and ceramic pot. "One doesn't have to have more than nine hundred years to have regrets or to be plagued by them in the night."

Nodding in understanding, he said, "Of course not."

The two men sat in the kitchen while the tea steeped, and then the Doctor poured both of them a cup. Giles accepted his with a quiet, "Ta," and they drank together in companionable silence. Both knew that neither was getting any more sleep that night.

Xander walked up to Buffy and Willow sitting on the stone benches out in the school yard. "What are you two up to?"

Buffy smiled up at him. "Just having a quick game of 'Anywhere But Here.'"

He waggled his eyebrows at them. "Oooh. You know, I used to just stick with Amy Yip at the waterslide park, but now I have so much more stuff in my head." He noticed the Doctor behind him and intentionally made no mention of Gallifrey. "The Rings of Akhaten during the Festival of Offerings. They sing a song to the deity there, a song they've been singing for millions of years, handing it down from singer to singer, never stopping, to keep him asleep. Very beautiful and great shopping."

Seeing Giles coming toward them, Willow said, "Do you think Giles ever played 'Anywhere But Here' when he was our age?"

The Doctor stuck his nose into the conversation. "Everyone wishes they were somewhere or somewhen else at some point in their lives."

Buffy shook her head, though. "I bet Giles complained that there wasn't more school."

"C'mon," said Willow. "You don't think he ever got restless as a kid?"

"Are you kidding? His diapers were tweed." Giles almost walked right past them, so Buffy yelled out to him. "Hey, Giles!"

He turned around and saw them. "Oh! There you are. Hello, everyone."

"Morning," said Buffy. Her finely tuned sense of fashion picked up on his attire. "Say, is that tweed?"

Preoccupied by the papers in his hands, Giles was confused for a moment. "What? Oh, yes. Um, now look, tonight is very important."

Buffy followed him, and the Doctor headed back into the school building by the same door. She rolled her eyes a little in resignation. "Now that's a surprise." The others quickly followed and she asked, "So what's on tap tonight that's so important? Uprising, prophesied ritual, preordained death fest?"

Xander said with fake wistfulness, "Ah, the old standards."

Ignoring him, Giles said, "Monthly medical transport delivering blood to the hospital."

"Mm. Vampire meals on wheels." Buffy stopped at her locker to change books.

"Hopefully not," said Giles. "We'll meet outside the hospital at 8:30 sharp. I'll bring the weaponry."

The Doctor spoke up. "Could you use another pair of eyes?"

Buffy said, "Sure. I'll bring the party mix!"

Giles rolled his eyes. "Just don't be late."

She pouted. "Have I ever let you down?"

He looked at her with a twitch to his mouth. "Do you want me to answer that, or should I just glare?"

Jenny Calendar chose that moment to come around the corner. "Hello, England."

Giles was instantly flustered, much to the amusement of the three teens. "Oh, hello, Ms-uh, ah-Jenny." Interested, the Doctor watched their interaction.

Xander and Willow were not so circumspect. Willow said in a breathy romantic voice, "Feel the passion!" Xander grinned at her, just as willing to tease the adults as she was.

But Jenny reminded them of her authority with a single word. "Willow-" She quickly toed the line, but continued to grin. "We still on for tomorrow?"

Willow nodded with enthusiasm. Xander said, "What's tomorrow?"

"I'm reviewing some computer basics for the couple of students who've fallen behind. Willow's helping me out for extra credit."

Xander shook his head. "Pour schlubs have to go to school on Saturday. Although, since you're going to be here anyway, I might ransack the library for a couple of things. That all right?"

She nodded. "Sure. It's pretty much just Cordelia anyway." Jenny looked up at Giles. "Walk me to class?"

Giles held out his arm for her and said, "My pleasure."

Xander chuckled at their retreating backs. "Just a twosome of cuteness."

Willow gushed, "Can't you just imagine them getting together?"

The Doctor shook his head in wonderment. "Are all humans so nosy about other people's relationships, or is it just teenagers?"

Xander raised an eyebrow at him. "Two words: Jackie Tyler."

He made a face. "Right." All humans, then.

Rose Tyler had been nineteen when she had come into his life, and though she was inexperienced in life, she'd been fairly mature in attitude. Buffy Summers was three years younger than that, and while she was far more experienced because of the lot she'd drawn in life, she wasn't as mature as Rose. He wasn't sure what he'd expected when he offered to help tonight, but this babble-thon wasn't it. For one thing, Giles was absent, and he was meant to be here.

"Of course, I was like, 'How do you expect to blend in wearing a decorative vegetable?'"

The Doctor winced, remembering what he'd worn in his fifth incarnation. "You'd be surprised how much you can do just by walking around like you're in charge. Although, I would say that doesn't include tardiness. Where is Rupert?"

"I know! He told _me_ not to be late!" Still, she looked worried, and frankly, so was he. "I should give him a call," she said and headed for the near-by pay phone.

"Buffy, the transport." He had spotted the van just as she turned, so they waited to watch. The blood van was met by two ER doctors. The van driver took a signature, then unloaded the cargo.

Buffy shrugged as they watched. "All's well that ends with cute ER doctors." But they didn't leave, both of them still feeling as if something were wrong.

As the driver pulled away, the Doctor said, "Since when do professional doctors take deliveries? Isn't that a job for a more menial worker?"

After the van was gone, a convertible pulled up into the place it just vacated. The two "doctors", sat the container on the ground, and one of them opened the lid, pulling out one unit and sucking on the bag. That was when the driver of the convertible got out. "Hey! No sampling the product!" The vampire hissed at him, but he dropped the bag and put the lid back down.

Buffy handed the Doctor a stake. He looked at it remembering the last time he had gone up against a vampire. She asked, "Can you handle this?"

He nodded solemnly, and he knew he was about to see a different side to this bubbly girl. Already he saw her demeanor change, and he could see the predator inside her. He followed her as she waded in, fists and feet flying. He soon had his own hands too full to watch her work. He rarely had to get into a physical altercation, much preferring to fight with technology, to make things explode once he and his companions were safely away. He took down governments with mere words. But that didn't mean he _couldn't_ fight, as the vampire in front of him quickly discovered. He fought the vampire with what he remembered of Venusian Aikido, a style the creature would certainly be unfamiliar with. It was a little wild, and looked frankly spastic, but that made it very unpredictable.

Angel arrived out of nowhere, and he took care of the driver. Before long, all three vampires were dust. The Doctor was vaguely disgusted, but at least the bodies of those long-dead people were no longer being used by the demons who had taken over them.

Seeing the look on his face, Buffy said, "You all right, Doctor?"

He smiled a little. "Yeah. I've fought vampires before. Bigger, though. Older. Had wings."

Angel said, "Old Ones?"

He nodded. "From what I've read, yes, I believe so. The Time Lords fought them when they first broke into our universe, and I killed their King myself. We know they got there through a dimensional rift, but that's all we know."

Suddenly, the car peeled out. "We missed one."

Buffy nodded. "Yeah, but they didn't get the shipment." She opened the lid to look, but it looked all right to her. "How did you know about this?"

"It's delivery day," said Angel. "Everybody knows about this." He looked over the contents himself. "They only ruined one bag."

"Do you think you could make sure the hospital gets the rest?" He nodded. "Thanks. I'm worried about Giles. He was supposed to meet us here."

"Maybe he's late?"

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Giles? Who counts tardiness as like the eighth deadly sin?"

Angel grinned. "Right. Go."

The Doctor said, "I'll head that way as well. After all, if my flatmate's in trouble I should know about it."

The pair of them started running, and Buffy was surprised to see the Doctor keeping right with her. "You run for fun?"

He chuckled, glad that not everyone knew about him. Several of his students had recognized him, and he'd actually tried to tell them that the actor, David Tennant, was a distant relative of his. It had gotten most of them off his back, but one or two had not been convinced. "Running is a side effect of my lifestyle. Even if we go somewhere in fancy dress, Rose has taken to wearing only flats, trainers if she can get away with it."

Buffy bobbed her head in acknowledgement. "I hear that."

"Rupert?" the Doctor called out, having used the key to the apartment he had been given by Giles. He was not unaware of the irony of being given a key to someone else's home for once.

Giles appeared at the door. "Doctor, I-Buffy! it's late. Uh, are you alright?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I was gonna ask you the same thing."

Too quickly, he said, "Yes, I'm fine, fine Look, I'm, uh, I'm rather busy at the moment, so, uh, I'll see you on Monday, at school."

He turned to go back inside, but Buffy wouldn't be dismissed so easily. "Giles, did you forget?" At his blank look, she reminded him. "The hospital, vampires, handy carryout packets of blood?"

"Oh!" Looking a little sheepish, but still distracted, he said, "Yes, uh, are you all right? Were you hurt?"

Her arms across her chest, she said, "No. I mean my feelings a little. What's wrong?"

Now Giles really started stammering. "Nothing, nothing, nothing's wrong. I-I'm just in the, uh, middle of something extremely important, and, uh, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna have to say good night now." And with that, he actually closed the door in her face.

Shocked, the Doctor said, "Oi! I'm supposed to be the rude one! What's wrong with you? That girl is worried about you, and frankly, so am I!"

He said, "No offence, Doctor, but this really isn't any of your business. I have to finish these phone calls."

That was when he smelled the alcohol. Giles was more unkempt than he'd ever seen him, and there was a bottle of amber liquid next to the phone and a list of names. With a disgusted roll of his eyes, the Doctor left for his room and closed the door, but he had much better senses than a human, and he shamelessly listened in on the next call Giles made.

The person on the other end picked up, grumbling angrily into the phone. Giles said, "Yes, I'm, I'm sorry to disturb you. It's uh ... I-I realize it's, uh, five in the morning there, um ... Uh, I-I'm trying to reach Deidre Page. My name is Rupert Giles, uh, uh, she knows me. It's-it's very important." There was a pause while the other person spoke, and then Giles tone changed. "I'm terribly sorry. I ... I-I didn't know. W-when did she, uh, pass away?" There was another short pause. "Oh. That recently." There was a settling noise, which the Doctor guessed was Giles sitting down. "Um, yes, yes, um, we were friends when we were young. My condolences."

Giles hung up the phone, poured himself another drink, and turned on the bathroom faucet to splash water on his face. Sparing a glance at the tattoo on his arm, he looked into his reflection. "So," he whispered, "You're back."

"Who's back, Rupert?" Giles spun around to find the Doctor standing in the doorway. "You sound like you're in trouble, and consider you a friend. Friends help each other."

Afraid, almost angry, and certainly intoxicated, Giles said, "Thank you Doctor, but it's rather dangerous to be my friend right now, so if you don't mind, kindly shunt off." He intentionally quoted his ninth self.

The alien shrugged, giving him a look of disappointment. "It's always dangerous to be my friend." But he didn't push, leaving the loo and then the house.

Jenny led Willow and Cordelia down the hall to the computer lab, the later complaining with every step. Xander was also in the building, but he had run by the library to pick up the psychology books he was wanting to read.

"This isn't right," whined Cordelia. "School on a Saturday. It throws off my internal clock. And what are we going to need computers for in real life anyway?"

With a small grin, Jenny replied, "Hmm, let's see. There's home, school, work, games, on-line shopping ..." She paused to unlock the door.

"Shopping? Really?"

Willow nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, yeah. All kinds of businesses are setting up on-line stores."

"Imagine," Jenny continued, "being able to buy fresh designer fashions from New York or Paris with just a flick of your credit card."

Xander came around the corner, purloined books in hand. "Hey, Ms Calendar. You mind if I take up space while I read these?"

She nodded and motioned for the three teens to precede her into the room. "Sure. You know, you are the most improved student in any of my classes."

He shrugged. "Well, I couldn't very well keep getting bad grades when I could program these machines to calculate optimum travel routes through the Time Vortex to land you on Androzani Major during the Waking of the Trees. Not that the calculations would do any good without either a capsule or a vortex manipulator."

Cordelia snarked at him, "Well we can't all have weird alien math stuck in our heads by a crazy mage."

Buffy walked through the lab door then, surprising everyone. Willow said, "Aw, you miss your friends?"

Xander said, "Hey, Buffs! Why don't you sit here and demilitarize the zone between me and Cordelia!"

"Yeah, and delouse him while you're at it!"

Uncertainly, Buffy said to Jenny, "Actually I wanted to talk to you for a second?"

"Something wrong?" asked the technopagan.

"It's Giles."

"Well, he's alright, isn't he?"

Obviously unsure of herself, but unwilling to let it go, Buffy continued. "I don't know. Uh, he didn't show up when he was supposed to last night, and then, when I went to his place, he was acting-well, very anti-Giles. He wouldn't let me in, and he looked really bad. I-I think he was drinking."

Jenny frowned in surprise. "He was home alone drinking?"

Willow got flustery. "But, tea, right?"

Shaking her head with a little smile, she said, "Wasn't tea, Will."

Xander said, "Maybe he's having an off day?"

"So none of you guys have noticed anything different?"

"No." "Not really." "Nope." Then Cordelia said, "No, he seemed perfectly normal yesterday when I saw him talking to the police."

The all stared at her in disbelief. Buffy said, "And you waited 'till now to tell us this because ...?"

"I didn't think it was important."

Xander rolled his eyes. "And just when we thought you were starting to see beyond just you."

Jenny waved him off, and he realized he was being rude. "Well, what were the police talking to him about?"

"Oh, don't tell me, I know this one. Um...Something about...a homicide."

Buffy started freaking out even worse. "That's it. I-I'm calling him right now." And with that she left to find a phone.

Buffy found Ethan Rayne in the library, and punched him in the face for the aggravation of Halloween. But then he started spinning a tale, and, well, she needed to call Giles anyway.

He answered the phone in a very groggy tone. "Hello?"

"Giles, it's me." Keeping an eye on Ethan, Buffy prayed Giles would give her a straight answer.

Irritated, he said, "Buffy, unless this is an emergency, I'll see you on Monday."

 _Oh no, you don't._ "What's the Mark of Eyghon?"

There was silence. Stunned silence. Smugly, Ethan said, "Cat got his tongue?"

"I'm in your office with someone who claims to be an old friend of yours. Ethan Rayne?"

"He's there with you?" Giles voice was suddenly afraid. "Listen, Buffy, you're in danger while Ethan's there. I want you to put the phone down and get out of the library as soon as possible."

Miffed Buffy shouted into the phone, "I'm not going anywhere until you give me some answers!"

At that moment, glass from the window in Giles's office imploded to admit a zombie-like person. Ethan, coward that he was, tried to use Buffy for a human shield.

Giles could hear the sound of fighting and yelled, "Buffy?" Receiving no answer, he ran out of the apartment, heading for his car.

The Doctor wanted to talk to Rupert's young friends. Maybe someone will have noticed something to give him a clue as to what was going on with the Watcher. He went in, knowing they were in the computer class room, but then he saw them all running for the library, and he quickly joined them.

Buffy shouted from inside the library, "Don't let him get away!"

He reached them just in time to see Cordelia, ah, ensure that the man who was trying to escape could no longer contaminate the human gene pool. He looked inside the library and saw Buffy fighting someone who was very, um, _dead_. She quickly managed to lock him in the book cage.

He said, "What is he?"

Buffy shook her head. "I don't know. There's a lot here I don't know, and I'm really starting to get annoyed."

A groan from the man on the floor drew the Doctor's attention. The man looked familiar, and after a moment he realized that it was from the memories which had been transferred to him from Xander. Some of those memories were blocked because of his natural temporal avoidance reactions, but the face of Ethan Rayne was not blocked from him.

Buffy saw his recognition. "Well, I punched him, and Cordy kicked him. You wanna have a go?"

Not answering, he asked, "Is Rupert on his way here, by chance?"

"Um," she said and went over to where she'd dropped the phone to fight the zombie. She heard the noise that just meant the phone was off the hook. "Probably."

"Then I don't need to." He pulled a chair over to Ethan, picked him up by his right arm, and sat him in it. "What I do need is a valid idol of Janus as the Traveler, and since you are one of the few worshipers that creature has, I'm betting you know where I can find one."

Ethan said, "Why should I help you?" He hadn't yet seen the Doctor's face, and didn't know who he was dealing with.

So the Doctor got right in his face, causing him to jerk back. Then he jerked back again with recognition. "Because right now there are at least three people who want to rearrange your features until you look like a Picasso, and I'm not one of them for now. Given that I think you recognize me, I don't think you'll want to change that."

Face to face with the Oncoming Storm, Ethan struggled to control his bladder. "Right. Just checking.

Giles burst into the library, scared of what he would find, but everyone seemed to be okay. He asked anyway. "Is everyone alright?"

Cordelia was very exuberant. "Super! I kicked a guy!" Then she pointed at the cage. "The zombie interrupted our Saturday torture session."

Giles stared at him, horrified. He almost whispered, "It can't be!" But it was. Philip Henry was dead.

From his seat, Ethan said, "Yes it can." Giles turned to him with a glare. "Hello, Ripper."

"I thought I told you to leave town."

Really the man just couldn't keep his mouth shut, even when his life depended on it. "You did, I didn't." Giles walked over to Ethan as the chaos mage kept talking. "Shop's lease is paid 'till the end of the month."

Cordelia whispered to Xander, "Why did he call him Ripper?"

Giles grabbed Ethan by his hair and lifted him up out of the chair, eliminating the cheerleader's question. "You should have left when I told you."

"Giles?" Buffy said worriedly.

He ignored her. "You put these people in danger. The people I care about."

Ethan snarked at him. "If you cared so much about him, why didn't _you_ leave town?" He shoved Giles's arm back at him. "You've been having the dreams, I know. I have. We both know what's coming.

Buffy was really getting frustrated at this point. "What dreams!? What is going on here?"

"Tell her, Ripper." Ethan was loving this little bit of conflict, of making Rupert vulnerable again.

Then all hell broke loose. Philip escaped the book cage, sending the door flying into Jenny and knocking her unconscious. Giles dove for her, calling her name, while Buffy fought Philip again, until he suddenly collapsed and turned into a puddle of blue slime. The Doctor shouted, "Nobody touch that!" Then he grabbed Ethan by his shirt as he tried to run. "Did you think you were going somewhere?"

Ethan's lips quirked upward. "My mistake." Then he really looked at him. "How are you here? And should I be worried about Daleks or Cybermen or some such?"

The Doctor glared at the mage. "I'm here because you brought me here with your magical foolishness on Halloween!"

Ethan frowned. "That's not how it was supposed to work. A fictional character shouldn't have been made real past the spell breaking."

"Ah, but what if it were historical fiction, hmm? I'm not fictional, I'm extradimensional."

Ethan blinked, twice. "That's, um, different."

The Doctor huffed a laugh through his nose. "No kidding."

"Well, I guess that's why you need the idol, then? Right. Give me something to writhe on, and I'll give you an address. They should give you a very good deal. Janus isn't the most popular idol, and he'll be glad to get it off his shelves."

Jenny chose that moment to wake up, and that gave Ethan the distraction he needed to run. Buffy set out to try and find him, and the Doctor saw to Jenny, making sure she was alright. There was something on her scan, but he couldn't quantify it so he kept shut. He'd keep an eye on her, and if anything strange happened, he'd mention it then.

Giles asked her, "How's your head?"

"Throbbing," she said in a pained voice.

Buffy had been gone chasing Ethan for several minutes, and she came back in as the Doctor was checking Jenny's pupillary responses. "I lost Ethan. Giles, what's going on?"

Giles shut down like a falling portcullis. "It's complicated, Buffy, and quite frankly, it's private."

Buffy virtually erupted. "I don't care from private! I care from dead guys attacking us! I care from you lost weekending in your apartment!"

"I wasn't-" he stuttered. "I was trying to find a solution."

"Giles, share! What is the Mark of Eyghon?"

He glared at her. "This is not your battle! And your watcher," he said, standing to take advantage of his height, "I'm telling you unequivocally to stay out of it!"

She stared at him in confusion and disbelief.

Then Giles said, "I have to get Jenny home." And with that, the two teachers left the library.

Buffy stared after them for a while, then she visibly, shoved her hurt out of the way and rallied to do what needed to be done. "We have work to do. Will, I want you to find out anything and everything you can about the Mark of Eyghon."

"I'll try the net, but 'Mark of Eyghon sounds like a Giles and his books sort of deal."

"As I've read them all, I'll help you with that," said the Doctor. "I can't believe I let Ethan get away from me!"

Xander said, "Well, he's facing the Slayer, her pissed off Watcher, and the Oncoming Storm, all in the same room, with at least two out of the three ready to beat the living crap out of him. He's slimy, not suicidal."

She smiled a little at that. "You feel okay about digging into Giles's personal files and seeing what you can find?"

"Can do. Cordy, help me out."

Cordelia said, "why can't I help someone else?"

"You could go home." Xander raised an eyebrow at her.

"Okay, okay!" Grumbling quietly, she followed him into Giles's office.

Before following Willow into the stacks, the Doctor said, "He's ashamed of this, whatever it is. Most people have something in their past that haunts them. His just happens to be doing it literally."

Buffy nodded, then left to do what she could. He watched her leave then shook his head and went to help Willow. He was pretty sure he could find Eyghon in the Etruscan section.

A few minutes later, he was proven right. Willow showed the book to Buffy. "I thought the symbol was Egyptian, but it predates their iconology. Look, the Mark of Eyghon, worn by his initiates." The book showed a picture of a swirly black symbol, the same one Ethan had showed Buffy tattooed to his arm. "'Eyghon, also called the Sleepwalker, can only exist in this reality by possessing an unconscious host. Temporary possession imbues the host with a euphoric feeling of power.'"

Buffy looked at her. "Yeah, but what about non-temporary?"

"'Unless proper rituals are observed, the possession is permanent, and Eyghon will be born from within the host.'"

Cordelia said, "I'm guessing eww!"

But Willow had more. "Wait. Hey, listen. 'Once called, Eyghon can also take possession of the dead, but its demonic energy soon disintegrates the host, and it must jump to the nearest dead or unconscious person to continue living."

Buffy said, "I still don't get what this has to do with Giles."

The Doctor said, "Don't you? 'Euphoric feelings of power'? He was probably quite young, not much older than you lot, and he was getting high with the equally young and foolish people he considered friends. Ethan was one of them, this Phillip was another. I overheard him trying to get hold of a Deidre Paige last night. She's dead, too."

Desperately unhappy, Buffy said, "But Giles is so-tweedy. Stuffy. Duty and responsibility."

He shrugged. "He grew up."

They were silent for a moment, thinking. Then Willow said, "Wait. If Phillip is liquefied-"

Cordelia said, "So the demon's gone. There's no one dead to jump into. I mean we're all not dead, right?"

Thoughtfully, Buffy nodded. "No, no one dead."

At the same moment, Xander and the Doctor said, "But someone unconscious." Buffy and the Doctor ran for the exit. They needed to get to Giles.

Giles made tea, as was normal for him to do when stressed. he heard a noise, and he called out to Jenny from the kitchen. "What was that?"

"What was what?"

He came out of the Kitchen with two cups of tea on saucers. "I thought I heard something."

She shrugged. "I didn't."

He handed her one of the cups. "Here. Drink that, and then I'll drive you home."

She took a sip, then said, "You could take me home." Then she sat the cup down on the sofa table. "Or you could take advantage of me in my weakened state."

Giles swallowed thickly. He was surprised by the invitation, and frankly, very turned on, but taking advantage was _not_ his style. "Jenny, uh..." He moved away from her just a bit. "I'm, I'm really very attracted t-to you."

"Good." She followed him.

"But, um, now really isn't the right time."

"Oh, there's never been a better time." She stalked forward, her attitude becoming more and more predaceous. She pushed him into a chair and straddled his lap, kissing him hard and moving against him.

It was hard (no pun intended) but he pushed her away. "It's not right. I would be taking advantage."

Then her attitude shifted horribly. She rolled her eyes and stood up. "God, you just don't change, do you."

Confused and flustered, he said, "What?"

"'It's not right, it wouldn't be proper, people might get hurt.' You're like a woman, Ripper. You cry at every funeral." He looked at her in horror, realizing she was possessed by Eyghon. "You never had the strength for me. You don't deserve me." Her voice lowered to a cruel whisper. "But guess what. You've got me." And it dropped even further into a deep, male, demonic register. "Under your skin."

He was too horrified, to paralyzed by guilt, to fight back, too conflicted with it possessing Jenny to fight Eyghon. She kissed him roughly, and when she pulled back, her face had begun to change, now looking demonic. "Was it good for you?" Then she smashed his head against the desk. His head exploded with pain, and still he couldn't make himself fight her.

Worse, she knew it. "Aw, you never had the stomach. But that's okay, 'cause I'm gonna rip it out!" She picked him up and threw him against the bar, where he slumped to the floor.

Buffy came through the door like a missile, kicking Jenny, or rather Eyghon, in the jaw and sending it flying over the back of the couch. Then it got up, stalking around the couch and trying to decide whether or not to go through Buffy to get to Giles.

But it recognized a fellow predator in Buffy, even if she was still a pup, and when she told it to back off, it decided to go for easier meat. Laughing, it said, "Three down, two to go. Be seeing you." Then it turned and launched itself through the window.

The Doctor had come in behind Buffy, and he was checking on Giles. "He'll be alright," he said to her. "Just some bumps and bruises."

But his heart was fluttering in a block of ice. "Oh, Jenny! Oh, God!"

Leaning in front of him, Buffy said, "Giles, how do we stop this?"

"Oh, God, what have I done?"

The Doctor said, "Rupert! Focus!"

"Giles, you're scaring me."

He looked at his shoes. "I'm sorry."

She gripped him by the shoulders. "Don't be sorry, be Giles. C'mon, we fight monsters. This is what we do. They show up, they scare us, I beat them up and they go away. This isn't any different!"

"This _is_ different!"

"Because you don't know how to stop it?"

"Because I created it!"

Buffy sat back on her heels. The Doctor was right. But Giles didn't need recrimination. He needed to tell her the whole story. "Tell me."

The Doctor stood and said, "I'll put on a fresh pot of tea."

Buffy and Giles sat on the sofa and he began his story, shame dripping off his hunched form. "I was twenty-one, studying history at Oxford. And, of course, the occult by night. I hated it; the tedious grind of study, the overwhelming pressure of my destiny. I dropped out, went to London-and fell in with the worst crowd that would have me. We practiced magicks, small stuff for pleasure or gain. Then Ethan and I discovered something-bigger."

"Eyghon."

He nodded. The Doctor came in with the tea. He, of course, had heard the whole conversation all the way from the kitchen. "Yes. One of us would, um..." He took a sip of tea, then continued, "go into a deep sleep, and the others would summon him. It was an extraordinary high." He shook his head at such hubris. "God, we were fools."

The Doctor said, "You couldn't control it."

"One of us, Randall, he lost control. Eyghon took him whole. We tried to exorcise the demon from him, but it killed him. _We_ killed him. We thought we were free of the demon after that. But now he's back, and one by one, he will kill us all."

"'Three down, two to go'?"

Buffy said, "Then it's going after Ethan. I'd better beat it there."

Giles tried to stand. " _We'd_ better."

She shook her head no, though. " _I'd_ better. Giles, you're barely mobile, and speed is of the serious essence here."

He sat back down in sorrow. "I don't know how to stop it without killing Jenny."

"I've got the guys working on it. I'll try to keep it contained until we figure something out."

"Buffy?" She turned to look at him. "I'm sorry."

"I know. Doctor, can you stay with him?"

"Yeah." She left. "All right, Rupert. Let's get some ice on that."

Giles allowed himself to be led to the kitchen. "What you must think of me."

The Time Lord snorted. "You think you can compete with _me_ for regret?" He looked at Giles, pain and memory plain on his face. "My whole _planet_ is gone!"

"But that was a result of war."

He shook his head. _So they don't know everything._ "No. It was the end of war. It was the only way to stop it. There at the end, the Time Lords were nearly as bad as the Daleks, and I had to stop them both. I had a choice; my whole race and my home, including two and a half billion children, or the rest of creation."

Giles swallowed hard. "You didn't start it. It's not your fault. This is my fault."

"But I bloody well finished it. And no matter the reason, I have to live with that. We all have regrets, Rupert. It's what we do after that matters, and I think you're doing a hell of a job here."

After an hour of listening to Xander and Cordelia snipe at each other, Willow told them both to either shut up or go home. Shocked with her sudden assertiveness, they stopped the snarking.

Then Xander said, "Hey, why don't we give it another dead body to jump into?"

"Yeah!" agreed Cordelia. "At the cemetery."

Willow thought about it. "Well, that won't kill the demon. It'll only give it a change of scenery." Then she blinked. "Oh. Oh! I've got it! Another dead body!"

Xander blinked, then realized what was going through her head. "You're thinking-"

She ran for the phone. "Yeah!"

Cordelia looked between them. "Okay, you mind sharing with the non-mind-reader?"

Half an hour after Buffy left, Giles had a waking nightmare, and this time Buffy's face was in it. Ethan had caught and tattooed the Mark onto Buffy, then etched his own off with acid. Waking, he cursed Ethan's name. "He's Marked Buffy! I've got to get over there!"

The Doctor sighed. "All right, but I'm driving."

Buffy was going to kill him, human or not. He had tattooed her neck! And not just any tattoo, but a demonic tattoo! He had guts to do that to a Slayer, and she was going to prove it by showing them to him!

He said, "Well, I hate to mutilate and run, but..."

Eyghon came into the shop then told Ethan, "It's your time."

For a moment, Buffy thought Eyghon was going to get him anyway. She had been sawing at the ropes holding her with an exposed screw, and she frantically increased her pace, because it wasn't going to take that thing long to figure out that a switch had been made. It sniffed the air a bit, and shoved Ethan out of the way, making for Buffy just as the fibers of the rope parted. They began trading blows, and throwing furniture. Buffy was pinned to the wall by a table when Giles burst into the room. "Eyghon! Take me." It looked at him and moved to do exactly that. "Buffy, get out of here."

But Buffy got between them instead. "NO!"

And then the Doctor came in, his sonic screwdriver set to a horrible pitch, designed to threaten the demon within Jenny. Angel tapped his shoulder, and he moved to let the vampire into the room. Eyghon did what was natural to it and jumped into the nearest dead body; Angel's.

The other three teens came into the shop as the two demons fought for control of his body. Giles moved to where Jenny was lying on the floor, no longer deformed by Eyghon's demonic nature. "Jenny?"

Angel's face warped and moved as the two demons fought, and for a moment it looked bad, but eventually the vampiric demon kicked Eyghon out, and without a body, it crumbled into ash. Angel collapsed to the floor, and Buffy ran to him.

Buffy said, "You knew if the demon was in trouble it was going to jump into the nearest dead person."

Xander said, "Willow's idea."

Angel nodded, obviously still a bit shaken. "I've had a demon in me for a couple hundred years, and he's just been _waiting_ for a good fight."

Buffy smiled at him. "Winner and still champion."

Xander said, "Um, Ethan's gone again."

"Slippery, isn't he," commented the Doctor.

"Darn," said Buffy. "I really wanted to hit him 'till he bled."

Then Cordelia said, "At least it's over."

But it wasn't. There were still nightmares to be had, and Xander's mind was mixing its metaphors again. Images of Buffy, Giles or Jenny as Eyghon mixed with those of burning silver trees, Daleks, and the crumbling dome of Arcadia. One particularly nasty image of a little Gallifreyan girl, four or five years old, looking as if she were possessed by Eyghon woke him in the night.

His old man beat on the basement door. "Quiet!" He hadn't realized he'd been yelling in his sleep. This had to stop. It wouldn't do to give him an excuse. He needed to talk to the Doctor.

Nor was it over for Giles and Jenny. They still had some healing to do before their relationship would be able to move forward.

And Buffy needed to settle things with Giles, too. She saw him talking to Jenny, and then Jenny walked away down the hall alone. "Is she okay?"

He gave her a wan smile. "The hills are not alive."

Not getting the reference, she said, "I'm sorry to hear that, I think."

"I don't think she'll ever really forgive me. Maybe she shouldn't."

"Maybe you should."

"I never wanted you to see that side of me."

She shrugged. "I'm not gonna lie to you. It was scary. I'm so used to you being a grown up, and then I find out you're a person."

He smiled a real smile at that. "Most grown ups are."

"Who would have thought?" She was grinning at him now.

"Some are even, uh...shortsighted, foolish people."

"So after all this time, we finally find out that we _do_ have something in common. Which, apart from being a little weird, is kind of okay." She paused. "You ready to make fun of more of my music?"

He smirked at her. "Lead on."


	4. Nightmares

_**Notes:**_ _I want to thank everyone who reviewed, but a special thanks goes out to jonojigsaw. This chapter and every fourth one that follows it owes their existence to their review. And I'll try to get a bit more inventive within the existing episodes, too, but-well, I don't want to give too much away. Spoilers! ^_~_

 _Also, I want to give credit to Wikipedia for their article on Jeanne Poisson. The poster the Doctor uses is there, along with several other images if you want to take a look. This is where I got my information on her life._

 _I've got a rough outline of the whole book, which will go through the end of BtVS Season 2 and will also cover Army of Ghosts/Doomsday. Ideas and constructive criticism are definitely welcome, and please let me know if I commit any major blunders._

 _Warning for this chapter: mentions of spousal and child abuse. Nothing on camera, though._

 **Chapter 4: Nightmares**

 _"EXTERMINATE!" The Dalek slowly rotated his top dome toward the three teenaged girls, and no matter how Xander struggled, he couldn't free himself to release them. Buffy was knocked out, and Willow and Cordielia were tied too tightly to escape. "WATCH AS YOUR FRIENDS DIE, HUMAN!"_

 _One by one, their bodies were illuminated from within by the extermination ray as Xander mutely screamed in denial. Then the dome turned to him, and horribly, he welcomed it. "EXTERMINATE!"_

The green light of the Dalek's extermination ray still bright across his eyes, Xander woke screaming, and he knew he was in trouble. He'd been talking to the Doctor a little about his nightmares and it was helping, but the trouble wasn't going to come from his subconscious. It was going to come from his father.

Tony Harris was neither nice nor patient, and this was the third night in a row that Xander had screamed his way out of sleep. If Tony woke up, Xander was really going to be in for it. Xander had gotten pretty good at fighting vampires over the last year and a half or so, at least for a living non-slayer human, but he knew that wasn't the same thing. Tony was human, but he was big, well muscled from his work in construction, and...

Xander saw the hallway light come on and cursed quietly. He had to get out of the house, but-the window. The basement did have a small window that he might be able to escape by. There wasn't much time, so he grabbed his shoes and his book bag. He stuffed a couple of changes of clothes and his alarm clock into the bag. Then he moved the end table to the window and climbed up on it.

"Xander, you little shit! You woke me up again!" Tony's voice was right outside the door. Xander jumped up, pulling himself through the window and out into the yard. He stopped and looked around, making sure he wasn't going to run into a passing vampire, then took off for the high school. The janitor always left the library wing doors unlocked so that they could get in, having reached an understanding with Giles long ago. He could get into the gym, the locker-room. Hell, he could go into the attic where Marcie Ross, the girl who had turned invisible, had made her little nest. There was a futon mattress up there he could sleep on. He'd be able to wake up early in the morning and run down to the locker room for a shower and to do his laundry. He'd just have to make sure not to run into anyone else who might be there in the middle of the night.

The school was always a little eerie at night, but that was only to be expected. Most buildings will take on a spooky tone in the dark, and everything is spooky in Sunnydale, anyway. It didn't bother Xander because, to be honest, the school was more of a home to him than home was. He wouldn't ever go home if he didn't have to, and now, well, he wasn't going home anyway.

He pushed that thought back. He needed to get hidden before he allowed himself to think about what he'd done. He walked through the empty halls until he reached the band room. Marcie Ross had moved into the school after she had _literally_ disappeared, and then she had started tormenting the bullies who had tormented her. Buffy'd stopped her, but then the men in black had come and taken her away. Idly, he wondered if this world had anything like UNIT or Torchwood. If it did, that was where Marcie ended up. But her little cave upstairs was still there, and he was moving in. It wasn't like she could charge him rent.

Xander climbed the trophy cases under the loose ceiling tiles and then up into the vent space that Marcie had made into her little bedroom. There were some definite improvements that would have to be made, both for his comfort and for safety. He'd need a more stable crawlway, with some cross-bracing to support his weight with frequent travel. He'd need to bring a trash bag up here and get rid of Marcie's stuff. He'd also need to sneak back into his parents' house at some point to get more of his laundry and the few small Time Lordy projects he had lying around the basement. And his bed linens as hers were horribly girly.

He also needed to figure out what to do about money. Living in the school he'd have free use of the facilities and water, but he was going to need money for food and toiletries, for school supplies and for his tinkering. He was trying to build a sonic screwdriver from strictly Earth-based materials, and that was no mean feat.

He couldn't go get a job. Anything like that at his age would raise red flags with the authorities, and anything with set hours would keep him from having the freedom of movement necessary to help Buffy and Giles. But he might be able to do some things with computers. He could write some security software that would net a good amount of cash, have it deposited in an account under an assumed name. Since he had solutions to problems that didn't even exist yet, but that would rear their heads over the next twenty years, he could even start a company, hire Willow when she was older.

For tonight, though, he just needed sleep. His head was really hurting, both physically and mentally, and emotionally he was just drained. He cleared all the stuff off of Marcie's bed being careful with the piccolo because he thought he could probably sell it for a few bucks. He crawled into the bed and tried to get comfortable.

But his mind wouldn't be quiet. He had run, not from an alien enemy or a demon, but from his own father. Because his father would have come down into the basement and beaten the crap out of him. Unexpected and unwanted tears clouded his eyes. He hadn't cried in years, and he didn't plan on starting back up now. Still a tear rolled softly down each cheek before he could stop himself, and he wiped them angrily away.

Willow didn't even know about his old man, he'd hidden this that well for that long. The Doctor might know, because they'd been joined at the cranium, but the Time Lord had been very considerate of that temporary connection and hadn't looked, so he might not. Giles and Buffy certainly didn't know, and if Cordelia knew it would have gotten all over the school. He wasn't just running; he was hiding, and he swore to himself that one day the hiding would stop, even if the running never did.

And somehow he knew that this was a major shift in the timeline, the toy sonic being in the bin being the minor one. He would have dressed as a soldier, and now that thought made him shudder, but it would have given him a different solution to the problem of his father. For now, he knew that he was different, and that his changing timeline touched the most crucial one in their generation; that of the Slayer. He was her friend, so what affected him would affect her. And that was why he was hiding. He had to insulate his friends from his changes, or he could cause major ripples in their time streams.

Unless he could change Buffy's at that critical moment in her future. But that was _so_ dangerous. If it was fixed that she die at that point in space-time he _couldn't_ change it. Reapers-the thought made him shiver. They would eat the whole planet, and it would be his fault. But if it wasn't fixed-

By some instinct he stopped thinking about it. The line of thought literally cut itself off. That made him frown. That was something new. Since when did his mind have instinctive time controls?

His eyes widened. Time-related instincts were a Time Lord trait, a part of their biology that had developed to prevent paradoxes caused by their traveling through time and space. It was why one who met a younger version of himself would remember the encounter, but the younger one would not. He now had that instinct, keeping him from focusing on Buffy's future because-

 _Because he could see it!_ Xander's eyes caught the movement of a mouse running along the beams toward the general direction of the cafeteria, and knew that would be the perfect test. He focused on the mouse, on her tiny timeline. Even so small a creature had a path through time, and it would be a safe one to look at. Sure enough, he watched it unfurl before him, that thin golden strand that started six months ago and ended three months from now in the jaws of a stray cat.

Looking made Xander's head hurt, and no wonder. Human minds weren't meant to be able to do that, and he was definitely stretching his neurons with that stunt. But he could do it, and that was just amazing! It was scary as hell, but still quite fascinating. He needed to tell the Doctor about this, for sure. He'd be able to help him train this ability.

Tomorrow was a Saturday. Maybe he could catch the Doctor on Monday. Meanwhile, he needed to get some sleep, and then get the loft set up tomorrow and Sunday. It wasn't urgent enough to push it faster than that.

Tony Harris had to be at work at six a.m. Saturday morning. It was construction work, and his company staggered the shifts so they could get more work done, running half the crew Sunday to Thursday and the other half Tuesday to Saturday. This meant that he wouldn't be in the house. His mother would be.

Tamara Judah-Harris married Tony when she was only eighteen, and already pregnant with their son. His alcoholism and violence drove her alcoholism and withdrawal, but to Xander she had always been loving, kind and attentive. He wasn't worried about her causing him a problem; he was only worried about her remaining with Tony.

He waited behind the bushes that lined the border between their yard and the neighbor's for his father to leave the house. The man was obviously still hung over, but since it was Saturday, Xander would have all day long to get moved what he needed to. Once the truck was well down the road, he left the bushes and went into the house by the front door.

Tamara was sitting on the big couch in the living room, holding a bag of frozen peas on her left eye. Rage flooded his mind, but for her sake he squashed it. She needed his compassion right now, not vengeance. "Mom?"

"Xander? Are you okay? Tony said you ran away last night."

"I did." He sighed, guilt coming in under the rage. "I should have stayed so he wouldn't take it out on you." He sat down next to her and pulled her into a hug. "You need to get out of here. There's no reason for you to stay anymore. I'm not coming back here. Go to Grandma Judah's or your sister's place."

Indecision flitted across her face. "I don't know if I'm strong enough."

"Of course you are! You're brilliant! You're so much better than he lets you be, and I'll help you get out of here. I'll help you pack you car up right now as long as you're sober enough to drive it, or we'll call you a cab if you're not. But once you're out, I want you to get some help. Alcoholics Anonymous, Women's Services, a church, something. Stop the drinking, go to school, build a life. I know you can do this, Mom." He kissed her forehead.

"But I'm such a screw-up!"

"That's not what I see, Mom. I see a wonderful woman who got stuck in a horrible position and did the best she could with what she had. Now I'm giving you more to work with, the space and the freedom to become what you were meant to be."

She looked at her son, studying his face. He watched her, too, and judged her sober enough to drive. Some exercise would do her good, as well, and she'd get that in the packing. "You've changed. Grown up, I guess." Looking at her hands, she said, "You don't need me anymore."

He shook his head. "No, no, no, now you listen to me." He held her face in his hands so she was looking at him. "I will _always_ need you. But right now I need you _safe_."

Tears rolled down her face. "Come with me."

He shook his head. "There's people here who need me, people I've sworn to help. But don't think you're getting rid of me. We'll keep in touch; phones, e-mail, even old-fashioned letters. Whatever it takes. I'll visit you over the summer and we'll do something great together."

"You really think I can get better?"

He grinned at her. "Oh, Mom, never doubt it. You are going to be _fantastic_!" Tamara's face brightened a bit with a little smile.

By Monday Xander had his loft completely redone to his liking. He'd taken his own futon mattress from the basement and all his linens and rolled them together into as compact a space as he could, packed all his clothes and all the little projects he was working on in a couple of old suitcases. Then he'd put a ridiculously powerful rare earth magnet on his home computer's hard drive for an hour to erase it. No way he was leaving that kind of technology upgrade around for someone to just pick up and play with.

It had taken him three trips between the school and the house, but he was indoors by sunset, and he spent the next couple of hours raiding various parts of the school for unused, trashed and otherwise discarded items that he could recycle and repurpose in his little space. he took paint from the art room and covered the walls in the brown and orange coral of the TARDIS control room, built a new computer station with a lamp that simulated the green light of the Time Rotor and began the process of building a miniature computer similar to a laptop, but more advanced than anything this planet would have in private hands for at least fifty years.

The space now to his liking, Xander spent the next day making it both easier to access and harder to find. He put in access panels that were perfectly disguised in the library, the locker room and the art room, all with extending ladders. He rigged a phone into the loft with its own extension from the school's main number. All of the wiring for the phone, computer and electricity were suspended from the ceiling of the loft and came down through the Time Rotor lamp, hidden by a tube of white PVC. The computer wasn't finished yet, and he needed parts to finish it, but all in all he was pleased with his TARDIS loft. When he came down early Monday morning, he got a quick shower and was ready for the day.

"Doctor?"

The Time Lord looked up from where he was grading the essays on Maximillien Robespierre's Reign of Terror, an exercise which was actually giving him pain, thankful to see a friendly face. It was Xander, but seriously he'd have taken anyone but Snyder or a Dalek. "Xander! What can I do for you?"

Seeing the hopeful look on his face, Xander grinned. "I take it you're hating the homework just as much as the students?"

The Doctor groaned and Xander chuckled a little. "It's a toss up which is worse; the essays or the text book. It's wrong half the time and they're wrong the other half." He looked up at his young fan-cum-student. "I need the break anyway, so what's on your mind?" He gestured to the second chair next to his at the library table.

Xander nodded and sat down. He took a moment to collect his thoughts, then said, "It's the nightmares, for one, but I've noticed some other things, too. I'm still able to see timelines if I try to look at them."

 _"What!?"_

"Yeah. I noticed my brain forcibly turning my train of thought off the other day, and so I tested it-on a mouse, don't worry. Even the mouse gave me a headache, though. Nine months of life, two litters of babies, and lunch for a cat three months from now." He clicked his fingers to emphasize the point.

"And it was the nightmares that had you thinking about it, no doubt. I could definitely wish the Time War hadn't got stuck in your head, but now you're starting to have this ability pop up-. I may need to take a look inside your head, see if anything else was affected."

But Xander recoiled, sitting up and back abruptly. "No." It was plain that he was barely refraining from shouting it. Something was bothering him more than the memories and nightmares. "There's got to be another way to get a handle on this."

The Doctor gave him a level look. "It'll be harder, but I can help you to train your mind without going into it." He said it quietly, gently. "I suppose being in each other's heads once was more than enough, eh?" He tried not to sound hurt by that rejection.

Xander hesitated, wording his response carefully. "My mind is a mess, like my bedroom. I don't invite people in there, either. It's not you."

The Doctor acknowledged the point, glad that he made it plain his reluctance wasn't due to it being the Doctor who was asking. "Very well. But this means we're both going to have to go somewhere very uncomfortable. In order to train your mind to deal with temporal vision, you're going to have to deal with the things that are giving you nightmares."

Xander nodded. "Sometimes I'll see what really happened, the memory by itself. But the ones that wake me up the most are when my own memories or fears get mixed up in it, like the one with the little Gallifreyan girl being possessed by Eyghon, or the one with the Daleks killing all my friends in front of me."

The images made the Doctor swallow hard, but he pressed on. "Those make sense. Your subconscious has a lot to deal with, and you hardly needed the Time War on top of it all." He sighed. "The demons and vampires, seen from my perspective, are little different from the vast universe I'm used to, save for their near-universal hatred of humans. But from your perspective, this is something else impossible dumped on top of an already impossible situation. When did you first find out about the reality of the underworld?"

"About a year and a half ago."

"That's not a lot of time to adjust before being bombarded a second time. You also have very real, very justified fears of losing your friends to the violence around you." He raised an eyebrow significantly. "Perhaps one in particular."

"Buffy. She-" Xander paused to gather his thoughts again. "Slayers don't live a long time. The war they're fighting-it's just as nasty as the Time War, for all that it's hidden, and they do it alone. Willow might get hurt trying to help, or just walking down the street. Cordelia practically has 'bite me' tattooed on her forehead. But Buffy's life _will_ end some day because of the battle she's called to fight. Not might. Not probably. Will. She's already died once, but I was close and was able to give her CPR." He sighed. "Maybe that's why her timeline is so tempting."

"Because you want to know when she's fated to die?"

"Because I'm praying she's not, even though I know better."

After showing Xander a few meditation techniques to get him started, and explaining that they would help him deal with the conflict in his head and organize it so that he could begin learning how to use and control his time sense, the Doctor sat back in his chair in the library and just let his thoughts drift. Their conversation had been more enlightening than Xander probably realized.

All of Xander's friends were strong, capable women. Their strengths were in different areas, but he admired them all the same and wanted to help them. This pointed to a woman he was not able to help as much as he liked, someone who should also be strong, and perhaps needed his help to be better, most logically his mother. Why that might be necessary-well, humans were quite capable of being absolutely awful to one another, even the ones they loved. Someone had hurt her, and it was no stretch to think that they had hurt Xander as well.

And given typical, if completely incomprehensible, human reactions to abuse, it wasn't hard for him to come to an unsubstantiated conclusion about Xander's home life. This was why he hadn't wanted the Doctor in his mind. Not that his fears for Buffy Summers were unfounded or incidental. That situation angered him, as well, and he wondered if there might be some way to alter it, to give her a better chance, more or better backup.

With a sigh, he stood to return to his classroom. His planning period was over, so it was time to get back into the thick of it. Thankfully the last class of the day was the honors students, so their level of interest and willingness to debate rather than argue were much better, making for a much more enjoyable class. The problems of Xander's possible home life and Buffy's future doom would have to be put on the back burner for now. But he was not forgetting about either one.

Cordelia was becoming a different problem all together. While he was glad that he had gotten her to pay closer attention in History, and that her scores were showing a marked improvement as a result, her attention was becoming less academia and more infatuation as time went on. She was leaving blatantly suggestive notes here and there, and her assignments would have notes in the margins as well. Worse, she'd watched exactly two episodes of the show that depicted his life; the one where he'd met Rose, and the one where he'd met Reinette. Somehow she'd come to the conclusion that she was better than Rose because of her socio-economic background, and that he'd be amenable to the company of someone with higher status.

He needed to disabuse her of that notion, and quickly. No one insulted Rose Tyler to him; certainly not a jumped up high school queen bee. He blinked and realized exactly what he needed to do about Cordelia

Tuesday's History class went into the gossip mill with frightening speed. It was the day someone actually took on Cordelia Chase and not only won, but forced her to submit.

Rumor out of the Cordettes had it that Cordelia had set her sights on Doctor Smith, the History teacher, and conventional wisdom was that Cordelia got what she wanted. But if there was one thing that could be said about Doctor Smith, it was that he was anything but conventional.

The class all settled in for the period, and the final bell rang. Doctor Smith stood up from his desk and walked around to the easel he'd placed there. "Before we leave the eighteenth century, I'd like to talk about one more figure in French history." With a flourish he flipped the cover sheet off, revealing a poster of a painting featuring a young woman in a green dress*. "Her name was Jeanne Antoinette Poisson. She was born in 1721 to Francois Poisson and Madeleine de la Motte. When she was four, her father was forced to flee France over several unpaid debts, charges he was later cleared of. Her earliest years were spent in a convent, but her mother later removed her and had her trained in the arts. It was rumored that she had an imaginary friend who lived in her fireplace, and when she was nine years old, a fortuneteller told her that she would one day reign over the heart of a king.

"When she was nineteen, she was married to Charles d'Etiolles. With him she had two children, a boy who died only a year after his birth, and a girl who survived. Her husband adored her, but she still had that prophesy in the back of her mind. She was introduced at court to Louis XV in 1745, when he was still mourning his third official mistress. It was February when she met him and by March of the following year she was his mistress, and she separated from her husband in May. To be presented at court, she would need a title, and the King loved her, so he didn't want her to want for anything. He bought the Marquisate of Pompadour and gave the estate, its titles and its coat of arms to his mistress.

"Understand, this girl was a commoner. Many thought the king debased himself by consorting with her, thought he was too good for her. But she used her position to patronize those whose beliefs she shared, including Voltaire and Choiseul, and she did all of this without irritating the Queen, who could have demanded her head. She was a common girl with common beliefs, a good head on her shoulders, and a great vision for France. She took Louis and she made him better, never faltering until her death from tuberculosis in 1764."

Here, Doctor Smith paused, pinning Cordelia with a look. "All those noble women would have taken her place in a heartbeat. But she was his best friend, beyond being his mistress. They played cards together, toured the countryside, went hunting. She sang his praises to anyone who would listen, and in turn he would never let her put herself down as the ravages of disease stole her youthful good looks. What could any of those silly young women have done for him that she could not?"

He walked back around his desk, but looked back out on the class. "There's not going to be an assignment over this, but I want all of you to think about this. Reinette, as she was known to her friends, was a real girl, not a falsehood of makeup, clothes and privilege. A real girl, whether she comes from nobility or money or from a lack of those things, is much better company through life. So, you young men think about what kind of person you really want to spend your life with, and you young ladies think about how to be a real girl and become a real woman, a woman worth knowing.

"My best friend comes from a council estate in London. She's never had money, and she didn't finish school. She was working in a department store selling clothes when I met her. But if there's anything in this universe or any other I believe in, I believe in her. She makes my life worth living. She makes me better. You should all be so lucky."

The Doctor Who fans in the room all had their eyes bugging out. So did the upper-crust boys and the Cordettes. But Cordelia was stunned immobile and mute, staring at Doctor Smith with the look of someone who'd taken a pole to the forehead. Then she frowned. It wasn't petulant, but thoughtful, a sign she was working something out in her head. Finally, she sat up straighter in her seat and nodded to him, her face clearing. She got the message. She wasn't better than Rose Tyler. But she could be a better Cordelia Chase. He smiled at her, pleased.

Class let out, and Doctor Smith was the first one out of the room, which left everyone else free to talk. Harmony said, "What's a council estate?"

Xander said, "Government housing, a bit like the projects in New York. Same reputation, too."

The girl scoffed, "And he thinks its better to be like that than like the rich French girl?"

Xander grinned and shook his head. "No, Harmony. He thinks that despite growing up like that _she's_ better than the rich French girl."

"Well that doesn't make any-"

"Harmony," Cordelia interrupted. "Drop it." She stood and gathered her books then left the room without another word.

Harmony looked at her retreating form in shock. "PMS much?"

Buffy walked up next to Xander, who was also getting ready to leave. "Wow. Did Cordelia just grow up?"

"I don't know," he said. "But I think she's starting to."

From the back of the classroom, a kid named Jonathan Levinson said to his neighbor, Andrew Wells, "Cordelia just met the Oncoming Storm!"

Xander turned to them as he walked out, rolling his eyes. "Hardly. That wasn't a storm. That was a polite notice."

Xander sat in the lunch room, eating the free meal provided by the school. He hoped he didn't look too hungry, but he certainly wasn't wasting any of the food. He would write the code for the security program he planned to sell in Ms. Calendar's class later that day and ship it to Microsoft before he met the Doctor in the library to work on his head. But then they had to decide to buy it and make him an offer. And he'd have to take what they offered because he couldn't afford not to.

He sighed, his apetite gone. He was homeless. He had run away, helped his mother run away, and now he was homeless. He knew that he didn't have to be. He could go to his friends and ask their parents for sanctuary. But he couldn't see being able to do that without having to explain why, and he didn't want the cops involved. He didn't want to end up in the system, or in a foster home. He needed to keep his ability to run, to help his friends, to defend the Earth. He couldn't do that with that kind of official scrutiny.

But that meant he had to get money, and writing and selling programs was the only way he could think to do it without resorting to something _really_ unsavory. For a moment, he cursed his youth, which limited what he could legally do without drawing attention, but only for a moment. Despite current evidence to the contrary, he knew what a fleeting gift youth was.

Oh, for a scrap of psychic paper!

He looked out across the lunch room. People watching was one of his favorite things to do even before the Doctor had got into his head. But before he got too far, he noticed that he was being observed. Cordelia was watching him, a quisitive look on her face.

Cordelia? Looking at him? _Why?_

Cordelia ate her lunch without tasting it, even though it had been made by Daddy's cook, who was really the best at what she did. The Doctor had really taught her a lesson today, and it was still swirling around in her head. A real girl is better than a real rich girl or a real popular girl, and he had a real girl waiting for him back home.

She'd watched that silly sci-fi show that he had come out of, and thought that, hey, sci-fi had actually got something right. The guy's seen, like everything there is, and he has a massively cool ride, great hair and he can take you anywhere you want, any _when_ you want! And he was riding around with that little bottle blonde scrap of trash-but now she got it. Rose wasn't a TV character to him. She was real, and even though he didn't say it, she could tell he loved her.

And he was telling her that she needed to be more like Rose. That went so far against what she'd always believed. Mama got where she was by being a classy bitch, and she trained her little girl to do the same. But when she thought about it, her parents didn't do stuff together. They had separate lives, except when there was a dinner party they both needed to go to. The Doctor and Rose were _friends_ , even if they weren't anything else. Did people ever really marry their best friend?

Suddenly she thought of one guy, someone she could turn into a "real girl" for. Xander Harris had been a loser to her way of thinking; no money, no real prospects, and a weirdo geek, too. But he was the most loyal guy she knew, sticking to his friends in this Twilight-Zone town and fighting the gross, the bad and the ugly on a nightly basis. Most guys would be splitsville if they had to deal with half this crap!

Cordelia looked across the lunch room, and spotted him people watching. What did he look for in the crowd of kids? What did he see that she didn't? And would he want to share it with her? If she could make herself really care? He was different than he used to be, she knew that. He was a lot more mature since Halloween. Since he'd accidentally brought the Doctor into this universe. Maybe he'd seen something, something that made him grow up a little.

She didn't know what she felt about Xander. It was too new for all of that. But she knew one thing for sure. She was curious.


	5. What's My Line? Part 1

_Notes: Okay, I'm sorry this has taken so long. You would not believe my life right now. I tried to keep the two parts of this together, but they just refused, so now they're Parts 1 and 2._

 _I really want to thank everyone who has reviewed this story, and for those of you who have waited so patiently on me. Enjoy, all!_

Chapter 5: What's My Line? Part 1

Willow walked up on Xander and Buffy in the lounge, her career aptitude test in hand for the beginning of Career Week. This was exciting for her, the thought of what all her skills might lead to.

"See, why don't they have a box for 'prefer the company of a few close companions'?" griped Xander. "Why does it have to be all or nothing?"

Listlessly, Buffy said, "So mark none of the above."

He grinned at her. "No box for that either. Too many variables for their poor, backward little computers."

Willow sat down in the seat next to Xander. "Are you mocking other people's computers again?"

"Absolutely. They're ancient pieces of junk. And how do they think that one test can tell us what we're meant to do for the rest of our lives, anyway?"

Willow smiled and settled down to fill out her questionnaire. "I'm kinda curious to see what kind of career I could have."

"Why suck all the spontaneity out of life? Besides whatever career you do end up in, you'll be brilliant! And I don't think this test can tell what sort of man I'm going to be. Still cooking, me."

"You're not gonna be 'still cooking' forever, though."

Xander shrugged. "No one knows the future, Will. Even the Doctor doesn't look." And I'm trying not to.

Cordelia walked past their group with her friends, and Xander noticed she was being remarkably civil, if still arrogant. "'I aspire to help my fellow man.' Check. I want to help them learn what not to wear." Her friends nodded unthinkingly.

Xander grinned. "Cordelia Chase. Defender of fashion."

She looked at him and almost said something scathing, but then she stopped and thought about it, and shrugged. "Ya gotta start somewhere."

At that his grin softened into a more genuine smile, and he inclined his head to her in acknowledgement. She smiled back, then continued walking.

Willow said, "Wow. Is she growing a soul?"

"Will!"

"Sorry, I-"

"Do I like shrubs?" Buffy interrupted.

"Well, if you don't know-" said Xander.

She slumped into her chair. "I shouldn't even be messing with this, but Snyder insisted. It's his hoop of the week, and he's not happy unless I'm jumping. But we all know what I'll be doing for the rest of my life, and it doesn't include an economic future."

Xander put a comforting hand on her shoulder, though her pessimism and his nightmares were matching up a little too closely for his tastes. "Buffy, you don't know that. Just because you've got something you have to do doesn't mean you can't do what you want, too. You've just got to figure out what that is for yourself. And in all our cases, no little aptitude test is going to tell us what that is."

The Doctor looked Snyder in the face and said, "No. Absolutely not."

"Mr. Smith-"

"That's Doctor Smith, _Mister Snyder_."

Snyder glared at him. "I'm telling you, that boy is cheating."

"That boy is growing up into a young man and discovering for the first time in his life that working comes with rewards, one of which is understanding. To be cheating, his wrong answers would have to match another student's, and there is no such correlation. Not one!"

"I say he's cheating! I want him tested alone in every class, including yours. And if you refuse _Mister Smith_ , I'll have to assume it's you who's letting him cheat!"

Snyder stomped out of the library, and the Doctor growled aspersions against his mother's virtue in Gallifreyan.

Xander surreptitiously climbed down from his loft access, praying the alien was distracted enough not to hear him moving around, his thoughts all the while on Snyder's horrible accusations. The troll had no proof that Xander was cheating, because he wasn't, but his increased scores were enough in Snyder's eyes to think the worst. To him, this was nothing new, but he was grateful to the Doctor for being upset and willing to defend him.

Once he was clear of the access, he walked out of the stacks with a book on the American Revolution that he'd actually grabbed last night. It would look like he'd gotten in early to hit the library rather than having spent the night in the school. Then he said, "Don't worry about it. It's not like I'll flunk the extra tests."

The Doctor whipped around at his voice, startled. Then he registered what Xander had said. "You shouldn't have to take them." He looked back at the library door, muttering, "Bloody Zygon."

Xander grinned. "There's an image; big red thing covered in suckers with his face on it." Then he sobered a little. "Hey, I want to thank you for helping me with those meditation techniques. I've got things a lot more compartmentalized now, and my nightmares have settled down a bit. They're not gone, but it's not nearly as bad as it was."

He smiled at his student. "Good work. After classes tonight, if we're able, we'll start working on that quantum awareness of yours."

Xander nodded. "Sounds good. When do you want me to run Snyder's hampster wheel?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Never. But if we must, I guess Friday would be easiest for both of us."

"Right. Well, I'm off to find some breakfast. There's a bacon sandwich somewhere with my name on it."

The Doctor frowned at the boy's retreating back. He had been in here all night, reading, while Giles griped at Watchers long dead and indexed their diaries. He'd never gone back to their flat. How had Xander gotten into the library without him knowing?

Later that morning, Xander went to the bulletin board where the career fair booth assignments were posted. He was still ambivalent about the stupid test, but thanks to Snyder's interpretation of the word "voluntary" he still had to attend his fated seminar.

Next to him, Cordelia found her name. "There I am. 'Motivational speaker.' Yeah! I could totally do that!"

"Now you just have to decide what you want to motivate people to do," said Xander distractedly, still trying to find his name on the lists. He'd found Buffy's and made certain that Willow's wasn't there, a fact he knew would bother her.

Cordelia flipped through the H-K list and found his name for him. "Oh. Well, that's actually-" She looked at him to gauge his reaction.

Xander was stunned, to be honest. He knew he'd said the tests meant nothing, but he had answered as truthfully as possible. A little smile played around the corner of his mouth. He looked at Cordelia, saw her watching. She smiled back.

Willow and Buffy were walking into the courtyard, talking about Buffy's love life. He told Cordelia he'd see her later, then ran to join them. "Hello, ladies."

They both said, "Hi, Xander."

"Wouldn't you two say you know me better than anyone else? Maybe even better than I know myself?"

Willow looked at him funny. "What's this about?"

"When you look at me, do you think 'journalist'?"

"What," asked Buffy, "like a reporter?"

"They just put up the assignments for the career fair, and according to my test results I can look forward to being gainfully employed in the growing field of travel writing."

"To do that you'd actually have to travel," said Willow. "Might be cool, getting to explore our little corner of the universe."

"I thought so. A straight line might be the shortest distance between two points, but it's by no means the most interesting. Still, I wouldn't want to leave either of you to do it. Besides, this is where the trouble is, right? That's where I should be."

Buffy shrugged. "Definitely can't get away from it around here."

"Yeah, you either. They assigned you to the booth for law enforcement professionals."

Her jaw dropped. "As in police?"

"As in polyester, doughnuts and guns."

Buffy let a whine escape her throat. Trying to make her feel better, Willow said, "But, doughnuts!"

She whined again, louder this time. "Well I'll just jump off that bridge when I come to it."

She looked at Giles, who was headed for the library, carrying a stack of books that was threatening to fall over. "First I have to deal with Giles. He's on this Tony Robbins hyper-efficiency kick. Expects me to check in with him every day after homeroom." She, too, started toward the library, whining again as she went. "Police?"

Xander started to follow her, but Willow pulled him back. "You didn't check to see which seminar I was assigned to, did you?"

He sighed, looking her right in the eye. "I did, and you weren't."

Confused, she said, "I wasn't what?"

"On the list."

"But I handed in my test! I used a number two pencil!"

"I'm sorry Will. Your name wasn't up there."

Now Willow made the same noise Buffy had. Why wouldn't her name be on the list?

Later that afternoon, Xander was about to get in line for his seminar, and he saw Willow flitting about the lounge. "Willow, what are you doing here? Escape from this madness, beautiful and undefined one!"

"I'm looking for Buffy," she said, continuing to look over the crowd for the familiar blonde head.

"Oh, she went with Giles about an hour ago. Something strange happened last night while she was out and she's bringing him up to speed on it." He didn't tell her that he'd heard them arguing about her non-future. Buffy's comments to Giles about her having as much choice in her life as a corpse were deeply disturbing, speaking to an encroaching depression that was dangerously apathetic. Apathy would get her killed.

But Willow's mind was on the here and now. "If she doesn't get back soon, Snyder's really-" They both saw Snyder at the same time. "-done a great job with the fair this year, hasn't he?"

"Absolutely! Plenty of variety, school spirit, and hors d'oeuvres! I love hors d'oeuvres! You'd almost think it was a party!"

Ignoring Xander, Snyder said, "Where is she?" He was obviously angry.

Willow tried to play it cool, but she was never very good at the game. "Who?"

He glared at her. "You know who."

"You mean Buffy?" She looked around searchingly, almost hoping Buffy would pop up somewhere. "I just saw her-"

"And don't feed me that 'I just saw her, she's around here somewhere' story."

Upset, Willow said, "But I did, a-and she is!"

Xander decided to help her in her misdirection. "For what it's worth-"

But Snyder still thought Xander was a cheater. "It's worth nothing, Harris. Whatever comes out of your mouth is a meaningless waste of breath. An airborne toxic event."

Xander glared at the tiny man. "Honesty's a sharp blade for such a dull mind. Beware the day I have it in my hand."

Clearly not comprehending, Snyder said, "Fascinating." Then he turned and left.

Willow looked at her friend, who was still glaring holes in Snyder's back. "Looking a little Oncoming-Stormy there, Xander."

"Yeah." But he consciously shook it off and walked toward the journalism booth. "Well I've got to see a lady about a magazine," he said, purposely saying it like he was headed for the loo.

She grinned at him. "Okay, see ya."

He didn't see her led off by two men in black suits. If he had, it most definitely would have worried him.

The Doctor met with Xander in the library at the end of the day, intending to help the boy with his time sense, but on arriving, they spotted the beginnings of a research session getting underway. "So much for homework," said Xander.

"Defending the Earth comes first, right?"

"As usual." But he was grinning as he said it, and soon the Doctor was grinning too.

Giles proceeded to tell them about the book that had been stolen form him during the mess with Ford and the fact that its author, Josephus Du Lac's tomb had been robbed.

"And Giles is sure that the vampire that stole the book is connected to the one you slayed last night?" asked Willow. "Or is it slew?"

Giles emerged from the stacks with an old National Geographic magazine. "Both are correct, and yes, I'm sure. Du Lac was both a theologian and a mathematician." He came down the staris, still reading. "This article describes an invention of his, which he called the Du Lac Cross."

"A bit egotistical of him," said the Doctor.

Giles bobbed his head to the side in acknowledgement. "The cross was more than a mere symbol," he said, handing the magazine to Willow. "It was used to understand certain mystical texts, to, ah, decipher hidden meanings and so forth."

Buffy looked at him with raised eyebrows. "So you're saying these vampires went to all this hassle for your basic decoder ring?"

Giles opened his mouth, thought about it, closed it, then said, "Ah, actually, yes. I suppose I am."

Willow said, "According to this, Du Lac destroyed every cross except the one buried with him."

Buffy looked at the picture in the magazine as Willow passed it to her. It was a drawing of the general design of the cross. "Why destroy your own work?"

The Doctor said, "Perhaps he feared what that work might be used for."

"A fear we'll all soon get to experience for ourselves," said Xander. "No way these vamps are just sitting on this."

Grimly, Giles said, "Unless we can preempt their plans."

"How," asked Willow.

"By learning what's in the book before they do." He smiled ruefully. "Which means we can expect to be here late into the night."

Willow grinned and said, "Goody! Research party!"

Xander smiled fondly at his oldest friend. She would always love learning about this stuff. "Will," he teased, "you know that's unnatural, right?" She swatted him on the shoulder.

"And on that note," said Buffy, "I really have to bail, but I promise I'll be back bright and early tomorrow, ready to slay."

Frowning, Giles said, "This is a matter of some urgency, Buffy."

Shifting, and looking down at her toes once before realizing it made her look guilty, Buffy looked at her Watcher and said, "I realize that. Well, you have to admit, I kinda lack in the book area. I mean, you guys are the brains. I'd only be here for moral support, anyway."

Xander said, "Hey, don't insult yourself like that." He pointed at her with his pencil. "You're plenty smart, and I won't have you saying otherwise."

Surprised, Buffy smiled at him. "Thanks, Xander."

Willow, though, knew why she really wanted to leave. "Still, shouldn't she go and get some rest? This could get really messy soon."

Giles thought about it. "Perhaps you're right. We could have a major battle on our hands."

Somehow, though, neither Xander nor the Doctor thought Buffy was leaving to rest up.

About two hours later, they were proved right. Buffy came back into the library, a bit of a limp to her left knee. Xander went to the refrigerator in Giles's office for the icepack kept in its freezer, and the Doctor helped her to sit down on the steps that led to the stacks.

Giles said, "What happened?"

A little guilty, Buffy said, "Angel took me skating at that ice rink off the 17. This guy came out of nowhere and attacked me. Big, long hair, lost an eye at some point and didnt' bother to cover it with a patch. He was wearing this ring, and when Angel saw it, he seriously told me to find a hole to pull over my head."

Giles took the ring from her and carried it to his magnifying lense to examine more closely.

The Doctor looked up from examining her knee. "It should be fine; just keep that ice on it for a few minutes. He told you to hide?"

"This guy was hard-core. And Angel was power-freaked by that ring."

"I'm afraid he was not overreacting," said Giles, who had paled considerably. "This ring is only worn by members of the Order of Taraka. It's a society of deadly assasins dating back to King Solomon." He sat down hard. "Their credo is to sow discord and kill the unwary."

Xander gulped. Yes, he saw Buffy's possible death still more than three years away, but if it wasn't a fixed point, then anything could happen in the meanwhile, and being the Slayer was not a safe place to stand, ever.

The Doctor said, "Other than chaps, what motivates these assassins?"

"Yeah," said Buffy. "Why are they after me?"

Willow ventured a guess. "Because you're the scourge of the underworld?"

Still feeling a little guilty at putting her personal wants before the welfare of the people around her, Buffy said, "I haven't been that scourgy lately."

Worried and stressed, Giles rubbed his tired eyes. "I don't know. I think the best thing we can do right now is find a secure location, somewhere out of the way you can go until we decide on the best course of action."

Buffy stood, her accelerated healing already having taken over from where the ice was helping her heal. "Okay, now you and Angel both have said to head for the hills. Are you saying that I can't handle this, that I'm not strong enough to fight these people?"

"They're a breed apart, Buffy. Unlike vampires they have no earthly desires, but to collect their bounty. They find a target, and-" Giles hesitated a bit, because the subject was so painful for him to consider, but he had to say it. "They eliminate it. You can kill as many of them as you like. It won't make any difference. Where there's one, there will be another, and another. They won't stop coming until the job is done.

"Each one works alone, his own way. Some are human, some are decidedly not. You won't know who they are until they strike."

Now Buffy was freaked. She walked out of the library, and Xander decided to follow her. She said, "Xander, no. If they come after me, they could get you."

"Two pairs of eyes are better than one. I'm just planning on walking with you until you get where you're going; home o-or Angel's place, or somewhere completely different. Then I'll come back to help with the research. All though, they've got the Doctor, and there's no faster reader than a Time Lord on a mission."

"I-" Buffy sighed. "All right. Let's go."

"Where we goin'?"

She thought about it for a moment. "Angel's."

Willow looked more worried than the Doctor had ever seen her, and he was afraid Giles was going to wear a hole through his lenses with the amount of polishing he was doing. Buffy would always be a point of worry for her friends, and Giles had basically put himself in the place of her absent father. "I wish there was more we could do," said Willow.

Giles shook his head and replaced his glasses on his face. "We're doing all that we can. The only course of action is to try and find out what was in that stolen book." He started thumbing through the card catalogue.

"I've just never seen Buffy like that. She just took off."

The Doctor returned from the office. "Well, she didn't go home. The phone just kept ringing at her house."

Willow nodded. "Yeah, her mom's out of town. Buying trip for the gallery."

"Well," said Giles, "maybe Buffy unplugged the phone."

He shook his head. "Statistically impossible for any human female from the 1960s to the 7500s, and then only because they invented thought chat."

Willow nodded, agreeing completely.

Card in hand Giles sat down, staring through the heavy paper. "Well, perhaps my words of caution were...a little too alarming." Worry was virtually pouring off of him.

"At least Xander went with her," said the Doctor. "She's not alone out there."

"But what good will he do her?" Giles stopped, realizing what he'd said, and just slumped forward in the chair. "Sorry."

The Doctor shook his head. "Much harder to sneak up on someone if someone else is watching their back."

"I know, and I really didn't mean anything by that."

Willow said, "At least she took you seriously, Giles. I just wish we knew where she was."

When they arrived at Angel's appartment, it was obvious that no one was home. Xander said, "I really need my own sonic, or even a set of lock picks." Buffy broke the door knob. "Well, that works, too." He lookes around, noting Angel's minimalist decor. "You gonna stay here until he comes back in the morning?"

"Yeah." She sat down on the bed, and sighed. "Xander, I wanted to thank you, for watching my back."

"Hey, even important, powerful people need friends along the way." He looked around and found Angel's phone. "I'm gonna call the library, let them know where you landed for the night."

"Okay."

As Xander made the call, neither knew that at that moment, Angel was meeting one of the new people in town, one who knew how to fight him, and one who knew where Buffy was going next. Angel ended up in a cage awaiting the sunrise with no certainty of rescue while a huntress ran for his home, hoping to meet up with the girl he loved.

Back at the library, Giles was on the phone with Xander. "Thanks for the call. We were worried. No, Willow's quite all right. She's also convincing the computer that the only letter in the alphabet is 'N'. Yes, on the keyboard. All right, thank you. I suppose that's a good idea, as well. Someone might have tried to burgle it, thinking that she'd go home. Good. And Xander? Be careful."

The Doctor looked up from the tome he was reading. "Where are they?"

"Angel's apartment. He isn't home, but it's an unexpected location and she should be safe there for the night."

"And Xander is checking to see if Buffy's house has been attacked?"

"Yes." Giles looked intently at the book he had. "Ah!" He gestured for the Doctor to follow him. Then he went to wake Willow.

At the sound of Giles's voice, Willow sat up like she'd been kicked and shouted, "Don't warn the tadpoles!"

Trying not to grin, Giles asked, "Are you all right?"

But she was very confused. "Giles? Doctor? What are you two doing here?"

The Doctor chuckled. "You're in the library, fell asleep. Are you ranidaphobic?"

"Huh?"

"You told us not to warn the tadpoles. I assume you were dreaming," said Giles.

"I-I have frog fear. Oh," she stretched her neck and rubbed the place on her face that was imprinted by the keys se had been laying on. "I'm sorry. I conked out."

"Nah," said the Doctor, waving off her apology. "You should have been home ages ago."

"Yes, quite," Giles agreed. "You've gone quite beyond the call of duty." He sat next to her. "Fortunately, I think-I think I've found something finally."

Willow sat up straighter and the Doctor leaned in. "You did?" asked Willow.

"I found a description of the missing Du Lac manuscript. It's a ritual. I-I haven't managed to decipher the details, but I-I believe the purpose is to restore a weak and sick vampire back to full health."

She frowned. "A vampire like Drusilla?" Buffy had told them all about Spike's crazy girlfriend who had been nearly killed by a mob in Prague.

"Exactly."

"Then Spike is the one paying the Order of Taraka," the Doctor guessed.

Willow nodded enthusiastically. "Because Buffy keeps getting in his way, and this is what she's getting in the way of!"

Xander and Cordelia walked together up to Buffy's front door. "I can't believe you dragged me out of bed for a ride," griped Cordelia. "What am I, mass transportation?"

"No, you're a friend with a car helping a friend without one." Xander tried the door, and it was secure. Then he tried a couple of windows while he kept talking. "You know, I don't think you're really the ice queen you pretend to be, or you would have told me where to get off when I called you."

She glared at him as one of the windows came open in his hands. "I still could, you know."

"Yes, yes you could." He climbed in the window and went around to the front door to let her into the house. He looked her in the eyes. "You planning to?"

She looked a little uncomfortable, but shook her head as she walked into the house. "No."

"Okay, then come on in. I'm gonna check the rest of the house. It'll just take a minute and then we can head to the school. Won't even be late."

"Is that an accomplishment for you?" she snarked. He grinned and went to check the rest of the entryways, including the upstairs windows, knowing Buffy used them to get in and out without her mother knwoing all the time. Actually, when Cordelia thought about it, Xander hadn't been late since Halloween.

Xander shook his head as he thought about Cordelia. It was like she was instinctively rude and irritable. Even when trying to better, and he had seen that she was, seen her smile a genuine smile that did funny things to his insides, she still had to snark. All though, he acknowledged, that could be because he'd woken her up at the crack of dawn. He'd gotten back to the school late last night, but things were so serious he hadn't gotten more than a couple hours of sleep.

Instead, he'd stayed awake, working on his computer. It was almost complete, and would be state of the art for the next fifty years, if it came to that. He'd written down the basis for several of the programs he wanted to write, and had even gotten them started on his workstation in Ms. Calendar's class, but he didn't want to take it too far on a public computer.

He sighed, thinking about the girl downstairs again. What would she think if she knew he was homeless and on the run? She already thought he was a loser, or at least she had thought it before she'd begun thinking about the feelings of others. Now she was right.

Down stairs, there was a knock at the front door, and Cordelia went to see who it was. There she saw a person who looked more like a librarian than Giles. Actually, he looked like a tax collector.

"Good day," he said. "I'm Norman Pfister with Blush Beautiful Skin Care and Cosmetics. I was wondering if I might interest you in some free samples?"

Cordelia brightened up considerably. "Free?" She stepped aside, allowing the salesman to come in, closing the door behind him.

Buffy would have slept for another hour at least. She was warm and the bed smelled like someone safe to her. But as a matter of survival, she was a naturally light sleeper, and the slight noise of Angel's front door opening and closing woke her.

And it was a good thing it did, because she looked up just in time to move out of the way as a mocha-skinned girl with long wavy hair and big jewelry tried to come down on her head with a hatchet. Angel's pillow took the blow for her, bleeding feathers all over the bed. The girl took another swing, and Buffy let the bed take it before flipping over her attacker's back to land on the floor behind her. She turned to face her. "You must be number two."

The girl wasn't a talker. She swung at Buffy with the hatchet, and Buffy dodged again, then wound the girl up in one of Angel's crimson bed curtains before kicking her to the floor. She was quick to get out of it, though, and came back up, ready to fight.

Buffy said, "Thanks for the wake up, but I think I'll stick with my clock radio." The fight continued until the strange girl finally got Buffy on the ground, and straddling her, tried to push the hatchet blade in and behead her. "Come on, don't make me do the chick fight thing."

Confused a bit, she said in a thick Jamaican accent, "Chick fight?"

Smirking at her, Buffy said, "You know." Claws were dug into skin and hair was pulled, but the other girl was too good for the dirty tactics to work for long. The hatchet was lost, but furniture was smashed, and lungs were emptied on both sides, with faces sporting shoe prints and fist marks. But they both ended up back on their feet ready for another round.

The stranger was very surprised that Buffy was such a match for her. "Who are you?"

Buffy was outraged. "Who am I? You attacked me! Who the hell are you?!"

"I am Kendra. De Vampire Slayer."

 _Notes: Okay, you can shoot me for the cliffie later. They did it first. And I want to thank everyone who has reviewed this story in its previous incarnation, hoping you will continue to do so in this one._

 _Right now I have to tell you about a couple of changes. First, as you'll have noticed, I've been reposting this story under a new pen name. The new pen name is because I lost my password...again. And when I set the thing up, I gave them the wrong phone number, off by one digit, so they couldn't just reset it for me. Honestly this has happened to me more than I'd like to admit, but I'm going to anyway. If you look into my Favorite Authors section, you'll see all of my past regenerations, so to speak. (I might favorite new stories, but not authors, just to keep things clear.) If you're particularly interested in a story, you can let me know by PM or by reviewing this story._

 _I have so many stories because it lets me keep writing, even when I get blocked. If one story won't move any further for me, I move on to another rather than stop in my tracks. As you can see, there's plenty of variety for me to switch my mental tracks, and enough stories to keep me out of the weeds. I hope you all understand and will enjoy the rest of the show!_


	6. What's My Line? Part 2

**Chapter 6: What's My Line? Part 2**

Buffy blinked. Twice. "Okay, one more time. You're the who?"

Irritated at being asked to repeat, Kendra said, "I'm de Slayer."

Buffy snorted out a laugh. "Nice try, but here's a tip: try that on someone who's not the real Slayer."

Thinking Buffy was trying to fool her, she said, "Ya can't stop me! Even if ya kill me, anodder Slayer will be sent to take me place."

"Could you stop with the Slayer thing? I'm the damn Slayer!"

Kendra scoffed. "Nonsense. Dere is but one, and I am she."

Still out of breath a bit, and realizing that the girl was serious, Buffy decided to call a truce. "Okay, a senario. You back off, I back off, and you promise not to go all wiggy until we can go to my Watcher and figure this out."

The Californiese confused the darker Slayer again. "Wiggy?"

"You know? No kick-o, no fight-o?"

Kendra thought about it, and nodded, relaxing enough to cross her arms. "I accept your scenario."

Relaxing her own stance a bit, Buffy tried to gather some of the puzzle pieces in her head. "So. You were sent here?"

"Yes, by my Watcher."

"To do what, exactly?"

Looking at the blonde Slayer like she was a moron, Kendra said, "To do my duty. I am here to kill vampires." She didn't mention, as they left Angel's apartment, that she had probably succeeded in that duty tonight.

The Doctor had taken Willow home so she could shower and change clothes for the school day, and then returned her. He was a bit worried about what her parents might say when he showed up with her, though it wasn't as bad as being a year late with Rose. But Willow told him not to worry, and in fact the girl's parents literally had nothing to say to him. He stayed in the car, per Willow's request. Her parents had apparently noticed neither her absence, her return, nor her departure, and to be honest, that bothered him.

But he conceded that he had very little experience in matters of family, so he put his concerns on the back burner. Willow seemed quite well adjusted, happy even, so perhaps this indifference from her parents worked for both them and her. If something changed, then he'd worry about it.

They went together to the library, as there was still about half an hour before classes were due to start. Hopefully Buffy and Xander twould be meeting them there as well and they could figure you what to do about Spike and the Order of Taraka.

He saw Buffy, who looked a bit worse for wear, and Giles, but there was also another girl there, so he couldn't talk about the supernatural where it could be understood. "Rupert, are you where you can talk about that project on the Constitutional Convention for my juniors?" he said, making it plain he wanted to talk in private.

Willow's just went to talk to Buffy. "Hey," she greeted, but they were both interrupted by the stranger in the room.

She came up on Willow and agressively said, "Identify yourself."

Buffy snarled at her, "Back off, Pink Ranger! These are our friends."

The darker girl looked at Buffy, incredulous. "Friends?"

In full sarcastic mode, the Slayer said, "Yeah. As in people you hang with. Amigo?"

"I don't understand."

Raising a surpised eyebrow, the Doctor said, "You don't understand friendship?"

Giles said, "Um, Kendra, there are a few people, ah, civilians if you like, who know Buffy's identity. Doctor Smith is one, an associate of mine who helps quite often with research, and Willow does both that and spends time with Buffy, socially." Giles threw the Doctor a quick look that he interpreted readily. He didn't want this girl knowing about the alien in their midst for some reason.

Now the girl was almost upset. "And you allow dis, sir? But de Slayer must work in secret for security."

"Yes, well, with Buffy, some flexibility is required."

The Doctor gave a bright smile that would have scared the crap out of anyone who knew him well. "Yes, flexibility from dusty old rule books that have existed since the Watchers first began destroying young girls' lives for the sake of their war." Giles flinched, and Kendra stared. "He actually allows the girl to keep her friends and her mother."

Willow broke in. "What's going on?"

Buffy said, "Apparently there's been a really big mixup."

Giles nodded. "It seems somehow that, a-another Slayer has been sent to Sunnydale."

"Wow." Willow was shocked. "Is that even possible? I mean, two Slayers at the same time?" She sat down in her usual chair.

The Doctor said, "Not according to my research, though I have admitedly been focusing on other areas than Slayer lore." Like getting home.

"But not to my knowlege, either," said Giles. "The new Slayer is only called after the previous Slayer has died-Oh, good Lord! You were dead, Buffy."

The blonde Slayer's eyes widened and she hunched down in her seat, obviously embarassed. "I was only gone for a minute."

The Doctor winced, remembering when Xander had told him that. This war had already taken this girl's life once, though there had been time to revive her through CPR, and it would do it again in three and a half years if the event in her timeline that both Xander and he had seen was a fixed point, and these people were talking about it like it was just another piece to the puzzle.

"Clearly it doesn't matter how long you were gone. You were physically dead, thus causing the activation of the next Slayer."

Kendra was clearly trying to stop a little smile from showing and failing miserably. "She died?"

Irritated, Buffy huffed, "Just a little."

"She drowned, but was revived," Giles explained.

A moment passed in silence. "Soooo," said the Doctor then, still trying to get over the fact that this teen-aged girl, who reminded him no little amount of Rose Tyler, had already been sacrificed once to this insanity. "There's a loophole in the singularity clause of the original working. I wonder if there are others."

"I don't know. This is completely unprecidented." Giles sat down from his pacing, taking his glasses off to polish them again. "I'm quite flummoxed."

"What's the flum?" said Buffy. "It's a mistake, she isn't supposed to be here, she goes home!" She turned to Kendra. "Look, no offense, I really don't mean this personally, but I'm not dead, and frankly having you around creeps me out just a little bit."

"Like a living gravestone," the Doctor mused.

Buffy glared at him. "Not helping."

"Sorry."

"I cannot just leave." Kendra stood with her arms crossed, upset. "I was sent here for a reason. Mr. Zabuto said all de signs indicate dat a very dark power is about to rise in Sunnydale."

Buffy stood and moved right in front of Kendra, oozing territoriality. "And what's your great plan for finding this dark power? You just gonna attack people randomly 'till you find a bad one?"

"Of course not."

"Then why the _hell_ did you attack me?!" Well, that explained how rough Buffy looked this morning.

"I tought you were a vampire." She glared back. "I saw you _kissing_ a vampire."

"Angel. Look, he is a vampire, but he's good." Buffy was a little more understanding.

"Angel? You mean Angelus? I've read about him. He is a monster."

The Doctor broke in there. "You don't have to be a vampire to be a monster. Nor do you have to be human to try and redeem yourself."

"A vampire has no soul to redeem."

"This one does," said Giles. "He was cursed by Romany Gypsies aproximately a hundred years ago, cursed with a soul."

"He's on the home team now," Buffy assured her.

But Kendra was obstinate. "I cannot believe you. He looked just like anodder animal when I-"

Instantly Buffy was back in Kendra's face. "When you what? What did you do to him?"

Kendra had the grace to look bothered. "I-" She hesitated.

"What did you do?"

Cordelia was having a good time rifling through the salesman's box of samples. This was her kind of fun, not running all over Sunnydale sticking pointy wooden things into dead people. Okay, _un_ dead. She turned back to Mr. Pfister. "Do you have anything in a raisin? I know you wouldn't think so, but I'm both a winter and a summer."

The man was distractedly looking around the house as he said, "Nine ninety-nine, tax included."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Something wasn't right. "You said that already. Do you have anything in the berry family?"

Again the salesman ignored her actual product-related questions. "Are there more ladies in the house?"

Well, maybe this could be the start of her helping-people thing. "They're not home. You know, nothing personal, but maybe you should look into selling dictionaries, or... some..." She saw a bug, like a _worm_ , crawling around on his hand, and instantly knew that her original instincts had been right. There was definitely something wrong here!

Xander chose that moment to come back down the stairs. Seeing the stranger, he played it cool, but he noticed Cordelia tensing up, so he was wary. "Hey, what's up?"

She looked up at him with panic in her eyes. "Um, he's a salesman, and he was just leaving, right? Uh, okay! Buh-bye! Thank you!"

He moved in front of Cordelia, not sure what was going on. It wasn't like her to turn down free samples. "Like she said, Mary Kay, time to-" Xander stopped as he spotted a worm crawling across the man's face and into his ear. He reached behind himself to grab Cordelia's hand and said, "Run!"

The salesman exploded into a million little pieces, each one another worm. They went for the kitchen door first, but he beat them to it, reforming there to try and catch them. Cordelia let out a little scream, involuntarily, and they quickly backtracked. The basement door was open, so they ran in and Xander immediately started looking for a way to block the worms from coming in. He handed the broom to Cordelia and she needed no instructions to start sweeping the worms that tried to get in back out into the hall while he searched for something, anything-there! He grabbed a stack of shop towels and a roll of duct tape. The worms would be able to move the towels, but not if they were taped down.

While Xander did that, Cordelia stomped on the three worms that had escaped her broom. "I'm sorry, Cordelia, but I think we're trapped."

She looked at his face, setting the broom aside. Something about the way he said that-"What, we can't get out?"

Kendra led Buffy to the back room of Willy's bar, and the blonde Slayer shouted for Angel, but there was no answer. Kendra said, "No ashes."

Buffy said, "What?"

"When a vampire combusts he leaves ashes."

"Yeah, I know the drill."

"So I did not kill him."

There was a tinge of disapproval in her voice that set Buffy on edge. "And I don't need to kill _you_."

That was when the bar owner, a two-faced squealer known as Willy that Buffy was well acquainted with, came through the door. "Whoa! There's a lotta tension in this room."

Kendra said nothing, but shoved him back through the door and onto the barroom floor.

Buffy rolled her eyes. "Doesn't anyone just say 'hello' where you come from?"

But the Jamaican Slayer just kept at it, flipping the weasel over and gripping his shirt, ready to smash his face in. "Dis one is dirty! I can _feel_ it!"

"That's really good for you, Percepto Girl." She picked Willy up by his shirt. "But we're not gonna get anything out of him if he's, oh, say, unconscious." She punctuated this by slamming him up against his own bar, taking some of the air out of his lungs while she was at it. "Where's Angel?" she asked him.

Willy tried to scramble. "My buddy Angel? You think I'd let him fry? I saved him in the nick! He was about five minutes away from being a crispy critter."

She narrowed her eyes at him, not sure she believed him. "Where'd he go?"

"Uh, he said he was gonna stay underground. You know, recuperate."

"Are you telling me the truth?"

"I swear on my mother's grave! Should something fatal happen to her, God forbid."

Kendra shrugged. "Den he is alright. We can return to your Watcher for orders."

Buffy let go of Willy, glaring at Kendra. "I don't take orders. I do things my way.

Kendra smirked at her. "No wonder you died."

They started to leave, and Willy called out to them. "I-I have to ask. Has either of you girls considered modeling? I have a friend with a camera? Strictly high-class nude work. You know, art photographs. But naked."

The girls exchanged a look of disgust and walked out of the bar.

"You don't have to answer right away!"

Cordelia was pacing around the basement. Waiting _not_ her thing! _Especially_ not waiting for creepy bug guys to get bored. Xander said, "Pacing is not helping."

"And do you have a better plan?"

"Working on it. No windows, no ventilation shafts big enough to fit into, no handy garbage chutes, no sonic and no mobile phones for another two years at least. Anything you have to add? I'm sure Buffy will show up eventually. It _is_ her house, after all."

"But you said she's supposed to be hiding!"

"And you think that's going to stop her for long?"

"Well what if it does? What am I supposed to do, just waste away down here with you. I don't think so!"

She made for the stairs, but Xander stopped her. "What are you doing?"

"Going to see if he's gone!"

"Good idea. What if he isn't?"

"Then we're no worse off and we can go with your plan on waiting for the superhero!"

He grabbed her by the arms. "We're _going_ to get out of this, Cordelia. I promise you. But I don't want you getting hurt." He swallowed. _Did that sound the way I think it did?_

Cordelia looked at him with wide eyes. _Did that mean what I think it did?_ "Why?"

 _Yep, that's how it sounded._ Xander knew that what he said next would change everything. He could come up with some kind of diversionary wording, make himself sound like an idiot, and she'd believe that. Or he could tell her the truth, and walk into dangerous territory.

He thought of Rose and the Doctor, and somehow the truth slipped out. "Y-You're a special girl."

Cordelia looked into his eyes, searching for any sign of ridicule. But all she found was honesty, and a little fear. He was afraid of her. Or maybe he was afraid of what she'd say to that. After all, she'd called him a loser more than once. "You think I'm special?"

"Of course," he said quietly. "You used to just be rich and lord your privilidge over everyone, but you've been changing a-and blossoming, and you're pretty in that way that means you'll be beautiful in a few years, and _Rassilon_ I'm babbling!" He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Did you ever watch the rest of the Doctor Who videos I gave you?" She nodded, and he continued. "You saw how scared the Doctor is to love Rose, because one day she'd grow old and die, and he'd lose her. But he lost her anyway, and way before her time, and he never told her, never got to say." He shook his head. "We're not at that place yet. Maybe we never will be. But I don't want to have the regret of never giving it a try."

She gave him a shy little smile. "Are you asking me out?"

"Yes."

She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the lips, then deepened the kiss into something much more passionate that went on for nearly a minute. Xander couldn't tell, even with his developing time senses, because the heat of the kiss blinded him to them. Then they slowly separated, gasping for air. "Ask me again after this is all over."

Xander kissed her forehead. "I will." Then he went up the stairs, not letting her get ahead of him. He was taking responsibility for getting her out of this mess, and he wasn't going to let her get hurt in the process. He pulled the tape off of the door, and no worms tried to come through. Then he opened the door. Nothing was in the hall.

Cordelia whispered, "He's gone?"

But Xander put a finger to his lips, asking her for quiet. He wasn't sure he bought it. There was a clear shot to the front door, but he really didn't trust the apparent calm. It just screamed trap to him.

Instead, he pushed Cordelia further down the hall, and into Joyce Summers's bedroom. There was a big window in there. He got her inside and closed the door as quietly as he could. Then they moved to that window. There was a little plant stand in front of it, but he moved it over just a bit to get at the window. He pulled it up as quietly as he could, then helped Cordelia climb out of it before hopping through himself. Then he reached back in and moved the plant stand back into position before closing the window behind him, not wanting to alarm Joyce when she came back.

They managed to get to the car without alerting Norman that they had gone, and once they had the engine running, Cordelia gunned it rather than wait around for him to show up again. They headed for the school, both of their minds on that kiss.

The Doctor was getting worried. He hadn't seen Xander all day, nor Cordelia. He had noticed the girl's interest in Xander after he had made it clear that he was not on her menu, but he didn't think they were the type to skip school for a tumble, at least not when there were supernatural problems afoot.

He _had_ spotted Buffy leaving Willow in the lounge to head for her law enforcement seminar and Willow being chatted up by Daniel Osbourne. He shrugged. Human teenagers and their hormones. Daniel was a decent enough young man, but though he tested very well, he rarely actually turned in assignments. He was quite intelligent, and probably bored to death by school, but he also had no real work ethic. Eh, perhaps they could even each other out.

The sound of a gunshot brought the Doctor's attention back to the career fair. Students and teachers were screaming and running. The Doctor ran into the fair, and had to duck as another shot flew through the space where his head had been and into the ceiling. The policewoman who was running the seminar was trying to shoot Buffy. The Slayer kneed her opponent in the middle, causing her to drop her gun, and the Doctor dove for it to prevent its recovery. He shouted at the room, "EVERYONE GET DOWN!"

Buffy ran for the hall that most of the students had not gone down, aiming to draw fire away from the other people. Unfortunately, that was right past Willow and Daniel. The woman was aiming for Buffy, but she obviously had target blindness, and didn't see that her aim would currently take out Willow instead. Daniel did, though. "LOOK OUT!" He grabbed her to pull her to the floor, and got a graze for his trouble.

The Doctor followed the assassin as she barrelled after Buffy. He got there in time to see Kendra kick the gun out of the woman's hands, following it with a kick to her face, landing her on her back next to the Doctor. She moved to take him hostage, but she had no idea what she had come upon, and before she could lay a hand on him, he laid a hand on her, pressing his fingers into her right temple and commanding her to sleep. He caught her as she went down, then methodically began rooting around for any further weaponry. He found another gun and a knife and quickly removed them, lest she be a danger when she woke.

He also found her handcuffs and keys. He took the keys so she couldn't use them to escape, and cuffed her to the pipe of a drinking fountain. "There. We can let the real police handle her from here."

Buffy had gone to check on Willow and Daniel, and Kendra was helping Jonathon up from the place he'd been cowering in.

"How is he," Buffy asked Willow.

"He's shot." She asked him, "Are you okay?"

Shaky from the adrenaline, he said, "I, uh, I'm shot!" He chuckled a bit, but the pain made him grit against it. "Y'know. Wow! It's odd! And painful."

The Doctor pulled a clean cloth from one of his transdimensional pockets. "Let's bind that up, shall we, Mr. Osbourne?"

Jonathon said in a shaky voice, "Was that a demonstration?"

Everone pretty much ignored that.

They got Buffy into the library because it wouldn't do for medical professionals to come anywhere near her, and because they needed to be able to speak freely. The Doctor listened to everything as he wrapped Buffy's knee. She'd wrenched it during the fight, the same one that the previous Tarakan assassin had injured at the ice rink, and now it needed some serious downtime, which no one was under the illusion that she would be given.

She was talking to Giles about the woman. "She was definitely one of the Taraka gang, Giles, and way gun happy."

"This, um, Oz chap, he-he's alright?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, just a scratch."

Willow said, "Thank goodness."

At that moment Xander and Cordelia walked into the library, and the Doctor couldn't help but notice her hand in his, but he didn't say anything. Kendra moved to intercept them, but Buffy said, "Down, girl!"

Xander said, "Who sponsored career day today? Manchester United?"

Giles came down with a book from the stacks. "We had a-a rather violent visit from the Order of Taraka."

"So did we, only it was a guy made out of about a billion little worms." Then he noticed Kendra. "Um, hello?"

Kendra, who had no experience with men her own age, was suddenly and completely out of her element and looked at the floor.

Giles said, "Oh, forgive me. Uh, Xander, Cordelia, this is Kendra. Uh, i-it's rather complicated, but she's also a Slayer."

Cordelia was tired from their ordeal, so she just said, "Nice to meet you," and then let go of Xander's hand to go and sit at the table.

"Another Slayer, huh? How does that work?"

The Doctor said, "CPR."

"Ah." Surprisingly, that simple explanation was enough for him. "Well then, welcome to the club."

Giles said, "Xander, um, this, this, uh, assassin you encountered, what, uh, what did he look like? Other than, uh, made of worms."

"A dictionary salesman," said Cordelia. "Although he was actually selling cosmetics."

Xander nodded. "And that was so women would let him into the house. He'd have gone after Mrs. Summers if she'd been there." He shook his head and sighed loudly. "Why are the bug people always coming after me?"

Buffy's eyes narrowed at the thought of anyone going after her Mom and said, "These Tarakas are definitely serious. I am _so_ glad Mom's in LA right now." She smiled a little. "Fortunately for me, Kendra's just as serious as they are."

But Giles was not yet relieved. "And, uh, I fear the worst is still to come. I've, I-I've discovered the remaining keys to Drusilla's cure. The, uh, the ritual requires the-the presence of her sire, and it must take place in a church on the night of the new moon."

Buffy sat up ramrod straight and breathed in sharply.

Kendra said, "The new moon. But that is tonight."

Giles nodded. "Exactly. And I-I'm sure the assassins were here to kill Buffy before she could put a stop to things."

Buffy said, "They need Drusilla's sire. You mean the vamp that made her?"

Giles looked at her with consern. "Yes."

Willow said, "Buffy, what is it?"

She looked at the floor, not liking Angel's past, but needing to acknowledge it. "Angel. He's Drusilla's sire. That day I caught him talking to her in the park, he was trying to convince her to leave town, 'cause he feels responsible for her. Of course, he was also keeping her from killing a kid." She looked up at Giles. "Will this ritual kill him?"

He sighed. "Yes, I'm afraid it will."

And that made things very simple. "We need to find this church. We need to find where this ritual is gonna take place!

Giles nodded. "Agreed, and we must work quickly. We have five hours before sundown."

Willow opened her laptop. "Don't worry, Buffy. We'll save Angel."

Kendra got angry at that. "Angel? But our priority is to stop Drusilla!"

Xander said, "Hey, I don't know how you do things in the Carribean, but around here we don't abandon friends and allies to the enemy."

Buffy said, "Look, you've got your priorities, and I've got mine. Right now they mesh. So, are you gonna help me, or are you gonna get out of my way?"

Kendra hesitated, but said, "I'm wit you."

Buffy said, "Good. 'Cause I've had it. Spike is going down. You can attack me, you can send assassins after me, that's fine. But nobody messes with my boyfriend!"

In an old abandoned church, which still had its pretty stained glass windows but no clear ones, something distinctly unholy was getting ready to happen. The ritual that would bring Drusilla back to full power was dangerous, magically speaking, and it required a lot of preparation. But that was hardly the worst of it. The ritual would only kill Angel. That wasn't enough for Drusilla. He had broken her, then made her, and finally abandoned her when he got his filthy, stinking soul back in his body. She had some issues that needed to be worked out, preferably in his flesh.

When the priests had left the church, they had, perhaps unwisely, left their stock of holy water behind. Drusilla sang quietly to herself as she ran cold fingers over an intricately carved wooden box with a label on it that stated it held that holy water, and lifted out a glass pitcher as carefully as she could. She sang the luliby her mother had sang to her when she was alive and shining.

She brought the pitcher over to where angel had been tied to her bed, sitting on the floor with his arms each tied to a post. "My mummy ate lemons. Raw." She knelt next to him, and as she spoke, caressed his chest like a lover. "She said she loved the way they made her mouth tingle. Little Anne." Then she let some of the holy water drip and pour onto his chest, burning and smoking, leaving trails of red welts. Angel jerked and bit back a scream. "Her favorite was custard-brandied pears."

He tried to talk to her. "Dru-"

"Shhh!" No, he didn't get to talk. This was her day, a day to remember when she was the human and he was the monster. She continued as if he hadn't spoken. "And pomegranates." She stood and climbed onto the bed behind Angel's head. "They used to make her face and fingers _aaall_ red." She poured more water onto his chest, but he wouldn't scream. "Remember? Hmm? Little fingers. Little hands. Do you?"

"If I could-"

"Bite your tongue!" No. No remorse was going to get in her way. _Dirty little soul infecting Daddy! Make it hurt, then_! "They used to eat cake, and eggs, and honey. Until you came and ripped their throats out." Then she upended the pitcher onto his bare chest, not even noticing the one or two drops that landed on her own skin. His agony finally tore it's way out of his throat, and it was _beautiful_!

Giles had a book of pictures, basically a hand-drawn mug shot diary, for the Order of Taraka, and he was bringing it out for Xander and Cordelia to peruse. They were looking for the specific Tarakan who had come after them in Buffy's house. Giles was looking over Willow's shoulder as she searched for the specific church that Spike was holed up in. "There are forty-three churches in Sunnydale? That seems a little excessive."

The Doctor said, "That depends on which p-country you're in." He stopped himself from saying planet by a hair, but he didn't think Kendra had picked up on it. She hadn't been exposed to scifi like the rest of these children had, anyway, so maybe she wouldn't jump to any conclusions.

Willow said, "It's probably because of the extra evil vibe from the Hellmouth. Makes people pray harder."

Giles nodded, offering her one of his mints that he'd just opened. She smiled and took one as he said, "Well check and see if any of them are closed or abandoned."

Xander and Cordelia continued poring over the mug shots, both trying to ignore, at least temporarily, the sudden change in their relationship, mainly the part where they might actually have one.

They were all startled at a sudden crash. Giles, perhaps worried at how the two Slayers were getting along, said loudly, "Is everything alright?"

But Buffy called back with humor, "Yeah, it's okay. Kendra killed the bad lamp."

Xander grinned. Girls and their weapons. Then he looked down at the next page in the book. "Oh, here we go! One evil sentient worm colony." He read the entry. "He can only be killed in his disassembled state."

Cordelia shuddered. "Ugh. Okay, I need to go and buy a whole lot of Raid."

Xander smilled a little, taking her hand under the table and rubbing his thumb across hers in a comforting gesture. He looked back at the book, flipping over a couple of other shots. "And here's your trigger-happy cop lady. Says she's often represented by a black jaguar because she's dark but she's supposed to be a protector. Turns out she was an actual cop at one point, but she liked the violence a bit too much. She's human, though."

"And under arrest by those police who haven't violated their oaths," said the Doctor. "I don't often care for police, but they certainly have their uses."

Xander grinned at him. "Just because you've had too many run-ins with the Judoon-"

"Oi!"

"Boys!" That came from Willow, behind the Doctor's head. "Do I need to separate you?"

Simultaneously silly and pointing at one another, they chorused, "He started it!" Everyone cracked up at that, and even Giles chuckled a bit.

Then the two Slayers came out of the office. Buffy said, "We've got an idea how we might find out where Spike's holed up. The guy who owns Willy's probably knows where they took him."

Kendra said, "We will make him tell us."

Giles said, "And you think he'll cooperate? I've heard some interesting things about that fellow."

Buffy grinned. "He'll tell us. He's a survivor."

Willy saw the expression on Buffy's face and knew he was in trouble, mostly because she slammed him up against his own bar. "Ah! Honest! I don't know where Angel is!"

The blonde Slayer glared at him. "What about this ritual? What have you heard?"

"N-nothing! I-it's all hush-hush!"

Affecting a bored tone, Kendra said, "Just hit him, Buffy."

"She likes to hit," Buffy said with a shrug, as if to say she wouldn't be able to stop the other girl from ripping him apart. Then she drew back a fist.

Not eager to be pummled, Willy said, "You know, m-maybe I did hear something about this ritual. Yeah, i-i-i-it's coming back to me. But, uh, I'd have to take you there."

"Let's go." She started guiding him out of the bar by the back of his jacket.

Kendra said, "First we must return to de Watcher."

Buffy was annoyed, majorly. "Excuse me? While we run to Giles, this whole thing could go down!"

"But it is procedure."

"It's brainless, you mean! If we don't go now, Angel could die."

Kendra sneered at her. "Is dat all you're worried about? Your boyfriend?"

"No, it's not all. I'm also worried that Drusilla coming back to full strength and no one being there to stop it!"

Kendra shook her head. "We can't stop dis ritual alone!"

Buffy took a deep breath, thinking about it. "You're right." She looked up at her sister Slayer. "You're right. You go back." She glared at Willy, thinking about what she said around him. "Tell the Watcher where I'll be." Kendra grinned at her. They were on the same page now! Kendra would follow them just far enough to know where to go, then get the others to help.

Of course, Willy had betrayed Buffy the second they walked in the door of the church. "Here ya go. Don't ever say your friend Willy don't come through in a pinch." Xander's bug guy was there, along with a few vamps. Nothing she couldn't handle, but she wanted to be there, so she held off for now.

As it was, she was late. Spike had finished his end of the ritual, and energy was now flowing through their dagger-bound hands, flowing from Angel and into Drusilla. It would drain him until he was a pile of ash and she was a full-powered monster again. Spike said, "Right, then! Now we just let them come to a simmering boil, and remove to a low flame."

That was when Willy barged in on them, Buffy being escorted by the Tarakan and the vampire guards. Spike glared at him as he said, "It's payday, Pal. I got your Slayer."

"What the hell are you smoking!? You bring _her_ in here? Now!?"

Willy was confused. "You said you wanted her."

He growled, "In the ground, pinhead! I wanted her dead."

"Now, that's not what I heard. Word was there was a bounty on her dead or alive.

"You heard wrong, Willy."

Buffy was frozen. Was she too late?

Spike caught her stare and walked over to her. "Yeah, it bugs me, too, seeing him like that. Another five minutes, though, and Angel will be dead, so-" He shrugged. "I forbear. Don't feel too bad for Angel, though. He's got something you haven't."

She glared at him, her stupor broken. "What's that?"

"Five minutes. Norman, have fun."

Buffy struggled against the vampire who held her, trying to get to Angel. But the other door slammed open, admitting Kendra, who went straight for that vampire's head and the one beside him with a flying double kick. They ended up with both of them slamming into Spike and knocking him to the ground.

Spike yelled, "Who the hell is this!?"

Buffy grinned at him. "It's your lucky day, Spike."

Kendra said, "Two Slayers." Then she decked him.

Buffy said, "No waiting!" And she jabbed him under the ribs.

Kendra took over the fight with Spike, allowing Buffy to go for Angel, but one of the other vampires drug her back and punched her in the head. That was when the others came in. Xander played bait for Norman the Salesman. "Hey wormy! Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, ya great maggot!" He ran and slammed the door. Smiling, Norman took the bait and went for him, disassembling himself and going under the door. On the other side of that door was a lovely pool of carpet glue and a box of diazinon crystals and salt. Cordelia wouldn't even have to mess up her shoes as they killed the creature's little bits.

Giles and Willow went for the other vampires in the room, and the Doctor went for Angel and Drusilla. He pulled the dagger, interrupting the flow of energy and ending the ritual. Drusilla had gained much, but not enough to make her an instant threat. She collapsed, and the Doctor focused on Angel. He was weak, but all right.

Giles, Willow and Buffy were all fighting the various vampire guards. Buffy and Kendra switched at one point, leaving Spike to the senior Slayer, which was more to both their likings. Having dealt with Norman, Xander and Cordelia joined the fray. But there were way too many vampires to go around, and Cordelia wasn't nearly as experienced with the actual slaying as the other humans. Seeing Xander's protective stance about her, the Doctor called her up to him. "Cordelia! Help me get him out of here!"

Xander was grateful to the Doctor for getting her into a relatively safer place, because now he could concentrate on the fighting. He held one vamp down for Willow to stake, and took out two more on his own.

Spike threw Buffy into a wall, and he could see that this was still not going to go his way. That skinny bloke that had come out of the mess from Halloween had already freed Angel, and Drusilla seemed very woozy. He took a torch from its sconce on the wall and threw it into a pile of drapes on the floor, then picked Dru up. "Sorry, baby. Gotta go. I hope it was enough."

Buffy had made it to the altar by this point, and she spotted the old censer. She grabbed it and swung it around her head to give it some speed, then launched it at Spike. It hit him in the head and knocked him and Drusilla into the pipe organ. The whole thing collapsed on top of them with a crash and miriad clangs from the pipes themselves.

The flames were starting to spread, so everyone else evacuated the building. The Doctor had propped Angel against the wheel of Giles's car and was scanning him with the sonic, but he shook his head. "The fact that he's technically dead throws off the readings, but I think he'll be all right."

Buffy knelt down next to him. "Thanks, Doctor." He nodded and stood, allowing the two some modicum of privacy as he went to help the others pack up their weapons and supplies.

Kendra watched the group as a whole, and was fairly confused. The Doctor noticed. "It's different than what you're used to, I imagine. I know that the traditions of the Watcher's Council will have had you raised by your Watcher, and that while he's been your only parental figure, he won't have been raising you like he was. He's been more of an instructor than a father, yes?"

She nodded, and it didn't pain her, because to her it was normal, but the way these people interacted-"It is like dey are all a family. It should get in her way, make it impossible for her to focus."

"And yet they make her stronger, they and her mother. It confuses you because you've never known a family." Kendra just nodded. "But people fight harder when it's for their families. In most human cultures, people are raised by families, and learn to rely on them. It's why, for the most part their military structures automatically include units of men, groups, and only rarely single individuals opperating in solitude. They know that the men will work better that way."

"So which is the right way?"

The Doctor smirked. "No such thing. It's just a different culture, that's all. For you, your knowledge and technique are your strengths, and you rely on the guidance of only one man. Buffy's culture is different, because she was raised by her parents, raised to have friends, and for those friends to become like family. She relys on them for emotional strength, and the fact is that she fights not for herself or for duty or even for the world, but for them. And they fight for her."

"It is dangerous for them."

"For them, she's worth the monsters."

The next day, Xander saw Willow and Oz getting closer, and he smiled. It was good to see his best and oldest friend finally finding romantic companionship, and he'd already proven he could fit into their wacky life, making good in the crisis and keeping Willow from getting killed. He was a very mellow sort, a good ballance to Willow's complete lack of mellow.

Then he spotted Cordelia. She was looking a little gun-shy, and he realized he needed to talk to her, so he ran after her. "Hey, Cordelia!" He didn't shout, but the way she jumped, you'd think she had. "About yesterday-"

"Hey, it's okay. I mean it was just a heat of the moment thing, right. I won't hold you to it."

Xander was stunned. Oh, no, no. He needed to nip that little swerve in the bud right now. "What if I want you to?"

She froze. Then she turned around, cautious hope in her eyes. "Really?"

"Yeah. I meant everything I said. I just didn't mean to say it at that moment. Not my best work, giant cootie trying to crawl under the door and all." He grabbed her hand and took a deep breath. "Cordelia Chase, would you like to have dinner with me Saturday night at Blue's Pizzaria? I'd ask about Friday, but Snyder's got me running his hopscotch course and I'm going to be exhausted."

She smiled. "I'd love to."

He gave her a wide grin. "Can I kiss you?"

"Yeah."

And then they kissed, right there in the corridor. It wasn't hot and heavy; it was too public for that. But it was sweet, and full of promise. As they separated she just smiled up at him and he watched her go as she headed off to class.

The Doctor came up behind him, saying, "I suppose I should give you a reprimand for that. It is against school rules." But he was grinning, and Xander knew he didn't mean it.

"Wouldn't stop me," he said, not taking his eyes off Cordelia's retreating back.

"Good."

"I kind of stole your line."

"I have a line?"

"Run."

"Ah." Cordelia turned a corner and Xander could no longer see her, so he turned to face the Doctor. "Congratulations. I hope it works out for you. So about that hopscotch course-"

Xander said, "Right. So I'm being tested in History, Chemistry and Spanish on Friday, and in Algebra, English and Computer Science on Thursday."

"Then today I'd like to do some work on your time senses after school in the library. Otherwise, you'll have no time to work on it this week at all."

"Agreed."

At the end of the day, they got Kendra booked on a flight back to Jamaica and Buffy was intent that she ride _in_ the plane like a normal person. You didn't have to be normal to act normal, after all. They'd also called her a cab, and it had finally arrived.

Kendra said, "Tank you for de shirt, it was very generous of you."

"Hey, it looks better on," Buffy shrugged, interrupting herself, "well, me, but no worries. Now, when you get to the airport-" She waited expectantly, but she didn't have too long to wait.

"I get on de plane with me ticket, and sit in a seat. Not de cargo hold."

"Very good." Buffy was trying not to grin at her.

"Dat is _not_ traveling under cover."

"Exactly. Relax! You earned it. Sit in your seat, you eat your peanuts, you watch the movie, well, unless it's about a dog or Chevy Chase."

Kendra smiled as well. "I'll remember."

Before she could finish getting into the cab, Buffy said, "I-um-I just wanted to thank you, for helping me save Angel."

The darker slayer rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "Mm. Am not tellin' me Watcher about dat. It is too strange dat a Slayer loves a vampire."

"Tell me about it."

"Still, he is pretty cute."

"Well, maybe they won't fire me for dating him."

Kendra shook her head at her. "You always do dat."

"Do what?"

"You talk about slaying like it's a job. It's not. It's who you are."

Buffy frowned. "Did you get that from your handbook?"

Kendra smiled. "No. From you."

Buffy shrugged then. "I guess it's something I really can't fight. I'm a freak," she said with a smile.

"Not de only freak."

"Not anymore."

They looked at each other for a moment, emotions passing back and forth that neither could name, but all of them good. Then Buffy made a move to hug Kendra.

But she backed away quickly. "I don't hug."

Buffy tried not to laugh "Right. No. Good. Hate hugs."

Kendra smiled at her, then got into the cab and left, Buffy waving at her as she pulled away. It wouldn't be the last time they saw her, she was sure.

Xander walked into the library, finding the Doctor sitting in the chair he'd basically claimed as his, a pot of tea on the table already ready to go. He sprawled into the one beside it so they could sit facing each other. Then he took the cup he was offered and straightened in the chair.

The Doctor said, "So, now that you've been able to reorganize your mind a bit, how would you feel about letting me see what's going on in there?"

Xander took a deep breath, then nodded. He was honestly afraid of having that big Time Lord brain rifling through his human one, but he knew that the Doctor needed to get some idea of what was going on in there to allow him to see Time, even in the slightest. He took a drink, then set his cup back on the worktable.

The Doctor set his cup down, as well, and leaned forward. "I'm going to have to do a relatively deep scan, Xander. So pay attention as we walk through there, and if there's anything you don't want me seeing, imagine a door, and I won't look. Ready?"

"As I can be."

The Doctor reached up and placed his fingertips at Xander's temples, and then dove in. Xander's mental landscape was actually built like the school, and the library was his center of memory. The Doctor wouldn't need to go in there, even though Xander had left that door open. He walked through the corridor, noting the lables over each door. Most were written in English and contained a skill set. One corridor's doors were all labled in different languages, and he realized that was Xander's language center. The first two doors, English and Spanish, were the oldest, but the corridor had been stretched, and it now contained forty other doors. The floor boards actually had stretch marks in them.

Then he found the five sensory centers, these doors marked only with idiograms; a tongue, a nose, a hand, an ear and an eye. But in the commons, just across from this corridor was a new structure, an ornate stone fountain. It's primary pool was about six inches deep, but the Doctor sensed it had once been much shallower, and that it was still growing deeper. There were small gold coins in the fountain, and he knew that these were individual timelines, and that if he picked them up, he'd see who they belonged to and something of their life, or he'd see the energy of their path through Time. He also knew that the deeper the fountain got, the more coins would appear within the water.

There was one more object in the water, one which amused him, but which made sense. It was a tiny toy TARDIS, and that was his own timeline. It was so small because he'd been in this universe for a relatively short time, but the longer he was here, the bigger it would get.

But what was causing the fountain to even exist, let alone grow?

Xander appeared next to him, and for a moment, the Doctor thought the boy wanted to tell him something. But he wasn't dressed as Xander usually dressed, but rather in a chocolate brown suit, a paisley tie, trainers and spectacles. This was Xander's Halloween costume. It didn't look exactly like his own outfit, because he hadn't precisely replicated it. And this was significant because this was the source of everything. The costume was still alive in Xander's head!

The costume looked at him and gave him a sad sort of smile. Then, in perfect Gallifreyan, he said, "I'm still small. But small things can't help but grow bigger and bigger."

The Doctor blinked. _It couldn't be!_ "A-Are you a Time Lord?!"

"Only partly. More like a human-Time Lord biological metacrisis. Not very old, though, so I'm not quite a problem yet. I'm going to become one, though." The Doctor realized the enormity of the situation. So did the metacrisis. His hands were trembling, afraid he would be killed to keep Xander alive.

Realization came to the Doctor and his expression cleared. "I'm not going to abort you, not if I can avoid it."

But the meticrisis shook his head. "You can't. His mind will burn."

"I'll find a way. You're growing slowly. He's only just become aware of anything but my memories. There's time to find another solution. Maybe if this had been sudden or full-blown we'd have to do that, to suppress you in some way. But I've got time to think and plan." He put his hand on the child's shoulder. "We'll fix this, Xander."

"I'm not sure that name fits me."

"When you grow up, you can choose a new one, a name that's a promise you keep to the world around you."

The Time-Lord Xander grinned shyly. "Thank you, Doctor." Then he said, "Time to wake up, now." And he poked him in the forehead with one finger, gently pushing him out of his mind.

The Doctor pulled away from Xander, releasing his head. Both of them were looking at each other with wide eyes. Xander said, "Holy crap!" And as that summed things up quite nicely, the Doctor said nothing else.


End file.
